This just wasn't a believable story. Minor spoilers ahead.
This one started off on a pretty creepy and interesting premise. Several white women in some random upper Pacific northwest town get together to discuss their ideas about racial animosity and ethnostates. Since I hadn't really read any reviews past the headline (or spoilers) I was very curious where this might lead given the universally high scores from critics.
Without giving away too much, the problems for me started once they ended up at the local grocery/convenience store and confronted two Asian women; one of whom was a victim of rape committed by the lead character's brother who we are told is in prison. The store scene is when we find out why. At this point in the movie, the women (and one husband) begin to make very stupid decisions that were totally unbelievable for real world characters of their age. Needless to say, it continues to spiral downward and out of control for them as the decision making gets even more incredibly stupid and lacking any logic or realism.
Then there's the relationships/dialog. The way the lead's husband was portrayed could not possibly represent a real life archetype - as both seemingly tough and down to earth but also susceptible to the absolutely ridiculous and unfounded, immature and laughable insults his wife begins to lay on him in a sort of cuck-guilt trip. And of course it all works. He goes along with a totally hare brained scheme for a "prank" and the director expects us to believe he's playing a believable character because he comes up with one decent, non-dumb (if you're part of a budding criminal enterprise) idea. Nonsense, LOL. Any halfway sane man would have laughed at this woman and said c'ya. But of course the director also did a good job of laying the groundwork by choosing the most attractive actress she could and building up to this moment in which we're supposed to believe that the poor dope, who was clearly out of her league, would go along with anything just to keep his (infertile?) wife around, no matter now frickin' ridiculous.
Once again, things devolve even further into a messy and utterly incomprehensible situation whereby a "prank" carried out by several middle aged and Gen X/Z women goes horribly wrong.
I think I know what the writer/director was going for here, but it failed. The hope was to create a scenario that started off seeming so real but ended up becoming so far fetched that it would resonate with critical audiences in the same way as "Nuevo Orden" (New Order) did. The problem here was that they took it too far. No reasonable person in that situation, no matter how bigoted or uneducated, would ever do anything remotely that mind blowingly stupid. There would have been too many "wait, should we really do this-es" along the way for it not to end up just a conversation among some overly racist women over some wine.
This film could have been done a lot better. Critics are obviously (over) praising it for the technical acumen that the production crew put forward and the all-too-contemporaneous messaging about how some casual racism can end up having real bad consequences if not held in check and shared with the wrong people. At the end of the day, none of it was believable, and I'm a viewer who likes being shocked and made to think about things. As examples I hold most of Michael Haneke's films in very high regard as well as the previously mentioned "New Order" or "Irreversible" or even "Deliverance." In this company, "Soft & Quiet" falls flat. I was checking my phone messages starting about half way through and didn't get emotionally involved at any point in the film.
6/10 - Good first effort marred by some ridiculous and, at the present time, all too typical (reverse) virtue signaling. If you want to make a movie about racism and bigotry that really hits home, try making it all more believable.
This one started off on a pretty creepy and interesting premise. Several white women in some random upper Pacific northwest town get together to discuss their ideas about racial animosity and ethnostates. Since I hadn't really read any reviews past the headline (or spoilers) I was very curious where this might lead given the universally high scores from critics.
Without giving away too much, the problems for me started once they ended up at the local grocery/convenience store and confronted two Asian women; one of whom was a victim of rape committed by the lead character's brother who we are told is in prison. The store scene is when we find out why. At this point in the movie, the women (and one husband) begin to make very stupid decisions that were totally unbelievable for real world characters of their age. Needless to say, it continues to spiral downward and out of control for them as the decision making gets even more incredibly stupid and lacking any logic or realism.
Then there's the relationships/dialog. The way the lead's husband was portrayed could not possibly represent a real life archetype - as both seemingly tough and down to earth but also susceptible to the absolutely ridiculous and unfounded, immature and laughable insults his wife begins to lay on him in a sort of cuck-guilt trip. And of course it all works. He goes along with a totally hare brained scheme for a "prank" and the director expects us to believe he's playing a believable character because he comes up with one decent, non-dumb (if you're part of a budding criminal enterprise) idea. Nonsense, LOL. Any halfway sane man would have laughed at this woman and said c'ya. But of course the director also did a good job of laying the groundwork by choosing the most attractive actress she could and building up to this moment in which we're supposed to believe that the poor dope, who was clearly out of her league, would go along with anything just to keep his (infertile?) wife around, no matter now frickin' ridiculous.
Once again, things devolve even further into a messy and utterly incomprehensible situation whereby a "prank" carried out by several middle aged and Gen X/Z women goes horribly wrong.
I think I know what the writer/director was going for here, but it failed. The hope was to create a scenario that started off seeming so real but ended up becoming so far fetched that it would resonate with critical audiences in the same way as "Nuevo Orden" (New Order) did. The problem here was that they took it too far. No reasonable person in that situation, no matter how bigoted or uneducated, would ever do anything remotely that mind blowingly stupid. There would have been too many "wait, should we really do this-es" along the way for it not to end up just a conversation among some overly racist women over some wine.
This film could have been done a lot better. Critics are obviously (over) praising it for the technical acumen that the production crew put forward and the all-too-contemporaneous messaging about how some casual racism can end up having real bad consequences if not held in check and shared with the wrong people. At the end of the day, none of it was believable, and I'm a viewer who likes being shocked and made to think about things. As examples I hold most of Michael Haneke's films in very high regard as well as the previously mentioned "New Order" or "Irreversible" or even "Deliverance." In this company, "Soft & Quiet" falls flat. I was checking my phone messages starting about half way through and didn't get emotionally involved at any point in the film.
6/10 - Good first effort marred by some ridiculous and, at the present time, all too typical (reverse) virtue signaling. If you want to make a movie about racism and bigotry that really hits home, try making it all more believable.