Sensitive topics are best handled carefully, whether in real life or on film. With Julie Keeps Quiet it's handled impeccably well. The performance by newcomer Tessa Van den Broeck is a great choice to make her debut as Julie, a very promising young tennis player.
These are just high school kids and when an incident happens with one of the students, their coach is suspended and eventually fired. The head of the school emails all the kids in the tennis group and has a meeting with all of them to explain his suspension, but not why.
Julie keeps to herself and she is very poker-faced, she's got something that she's not saying, but that is where the title of the film comes from. The adults are concerned for their children and what might have happened, we're not included in most of the adult conversations as our vested interest is Julie, we are with her for the majority of the day. We're almost like a best friend, that she clearly needs as she starts to process a few things through the film. She meets privately with her former coach to ask him why he was let go, it's all very vague, but clear in their last meeting what took place.
This is a very strong and well-made movie, with believable characters, and the actors help us get invested in them.
Their new coach asks her to show some of the other students how to do a volley serve, which bothers her, but she lets him know why.
I like that the film gave the kids a voice and even though they are not in full matches of tennis, in the end, that doesn't matter what does is the safety and sanity of the kids that are being mentored by adults that might have other ideas. Self-serving and damaging others.
Having played tennis quite a bit when I was younger, my favorite teacher in high school taught me how to play, he was in a league for many years. So I can appreciate the work these young people go through to try and make it in these competitions, etc.
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