The Qui­et Son – first-look review

The tit­u­lar qui­et son in Del­phine and Muriel Coulin’s The Qui­et Son is, it turns out, not that qui­et after all. He’s quite out­spo­ken about one sub­ject in par­tic­u­lar: the mer­its of France’s far-right.

Fus’ (Ben­jamin Voisin) new­found pas­sion for the white nation­al­ist move­ment comes as a sur­prise to his dad Pierre (Vin­cent Lin­don), a rail work­er who spent his youth plas­ter­ing antifas­cist posters across the same train lines he now tired­ly main­tains. A pre­ma­ture wid­ow­er, Pierre prides him­self on hav­ing raised Fus and his younger broth­er Louis (Ste­fan Cre­pon) to be kind, com­pas­sion­ate men who share his beliefs about the impor­tance of hon­est labour and con­tribut­ing pos­i­tive­ly to their community.

But then Fus begins hang­ing out with young thugs with shaved heads. It isn’t polit­i­cal, he says. They are just kids wast­ing time after foot­ball match­es, fool­ing around. Will their beloved Bor­deaux make it into the Pre­mier League this sea­son? Unlike­ly. But then they are just kids harass­ing African immi­grants online. And then they are just kids prowl­ing out­side super­mar­kets and accost­ing peo­ple of colour. And then they are just kids with brass knuck­les and crow­bars, loom­ing. Planning.

There­in lies the cen­tral issue of The Qui­et Son, a film so frus­trat­ing­ly set on infan­til­is­ing grown men it cir­cum­vents the con­ver­sa­tion around account­abil­i­ty entire­ly. The Coulin Sis­ters set out to build a cau­tion­ary tale on the eas­i­ness with which the far-right can con­vert the sus­cep­ti­ble, cush­ioned mid­dle-class, but find in this sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty a crutch for per­me­at­ing their unhur­ried dra­ma with a dan­ger­ous sense of pas­siv­i­ty. In an unfor­tu­nate mir­ror to the men­tal­i­ty of big­ots, The Qui­et One heed­less­ly attrib­ut­es blame to all but the grown men whose hate-filled rhetoric direct­ly fuels life-threat­en­ing actions

The film’s Eng­lish title does lit­tle to dis­perse this rhetoric of exemp­tion. Switch­ing the orig­i­nal Play­ing With Fire to The Qui­et Son changes the fram­ing of this sto­ry from the direct con­se­quences of one’s actions to a slip­pery idea of silence as per­mis­sion — or remis­sion, in Pierre’s case. The Coulin Sis­ters are much less con­cerned with delin­eat­ing the tac­tics suprema­cists employ in their con­ver­sion than they are with pun­ish­ing Lindon’s age­ing rail work­er, an infu­ri­at­ing through­line that cul­mi­nates in the film’s emo­tion­al cli­max: a mono­logue so out­ra­geous­ly mis­guid­ed as to have one ask­ing if The Qui­et Son is actu­al­ly in favour of us all show­ing a lit­tle more lenien­cy to fas­cists as long as they have lov­ing families.

While one may be cau­tious of plac­ing moral judg­ments upon a fic­tion­al sto­ry, The Qui­et Son is far too intent on root­ing its fic­tion in the fac­tu­al to mer­it the lux­u­ry of the unac­count­abil­i­ty it so eas­i­ly grants its char­ac­ters. The Coulins set their sto­ry by the bor­der of Ger­many, Bel­gium and Lux­em­bourg, and pep­per their film with news­casts on the boil­ing caul­dron of Euro­pean white nation­al­ism brew­ing in the region, prov­ing all too aware of the very real, very urgent con­se­quences of the dan­gers of such ide­al­ism. That they still make a film this will­ing to focus the con­ver­sa­tion on redemp­tion shows that the cau­tion­ary tale The Qui­et Son suc­ceeds in build­ing is not one on the per­verse sneak­i­ness of recruit­ment but on the dan­gers of root­ing a sto­ry sole­ly on the flim­si­ness of good intentions.