“Bay of Silence”
This is a brilliant film that explores love, a hidden pain, mental illness and covering up the truth
Premiering on VOD and selected theatres on August 14th, 2020
By Patrick Donovan – Author/Screenwriter
US Navy Disabled Veteran – 1980 – 1991
Seattle, WA (The Hollywood Times) 08/08/2020
“There’s something about mental illness. The pain that one suffers and the root causes of that pain. More importantly, how the person deals with that pain by covering the truth of the abuse they suffered.
Bay of Silence is a double entendre and it’s what happens when the person affected tries to bury that truth. A brilliant film that exposes how people deal with their pain, love and breaking through the hurt into freedom.”
– Patrick Donovan
About Bay of Silence:
A FILM BY PAULA VAN DER OEST (director of Oscar® nominee ZUS & ZO)
STARRING – Claes Bang (star of Oscar® nominee THE SQUARE), Olga Kurylenko
(QUANTUM OF SOLACE), Brian Cox (Succession)
PRODUCED, WRITTEN AND CO-STARRING – Caroline Goodall (SCHINDLER’S LIST)
Vertical Entertainment is proud to present THE BAY OF SILENCE, Paula van der Oest’s (director of Oscar® nominee ZUS & ZO) contemporary Hitchcockian thriller produced and written by actress Caroline Goodall, based upon Lisa St. Aubin de Teran’s novel of the same name. Claes Bang (star of Oscar® nominee THE SQUARE) and Olga Kurylenko (QUANTUM OF SOLACE) star in a classic case of “opposites attract,” but the honeymoon is short-lived. Bang’s Will realizes that he truly doesn’t know his troubled wife Rosalind, nor her dark past, to which her former stepfather (Succession’s Brian Cox) may hold the key. Vertical Entertainment will premiere the film in Virtual Cinemas, in select physical cinemas, and on digital and VOD platforms on Friday, August 14.
SYNOPSIS – When Will (Claes Bang) discovers his wife Rosalind (Olga Kurylenko) and their three children have suddenly disappeared, he sets off on a frantic search across Europe. He finally locates them in a remote village in northern France, but relief turns to horror when Will discovers his baby son has mysteriously died. Will sets out to discover the truth about his wife’s disappearance and the death of his son, finding himself at odds with Rosalind’s former stepfather, Milton (Brian Cox), who wants to ‘protect’ her for his own private reasons.
Fun Facts:
Baia del Silenzio
Continuing on the via Aurelia, after Chiavari you’ll find Sestri Levante, a pleasant although very touristic town that holds a real pearl at its hearth: La Baia del Silenzio, the bay of silence. A small bay which is just a charm. Too bad it’s overcrowded in the summertime, so best time to enjoy it would be spring or early autumn.
The Review:
A young girl runs barefoot in the dark with a boy taking metal suitcase to rocky cave, hiding it there. We see her and boy running and then she screams! A man and woman in the Bay of Silence in Ligura, Italy.
They make love against a rock wall overlooking the bay… now they are in bed… quietly laying next to each other. We see them about the town of Ligura, walking, they’re in love. Now they’re swimming in the Bay of Silence, enjoying each other’s company. A proposal. A life together. Now we’re in London 8 mos later. A new home and a new baby on the way then. Will sees the new home, a balcony. He moves it and it’s loose. He’s called away by two twins with him and then Ross is on that balcony. She supports herself on the weak railing to take a picture then it breaks, and she falls off on to the concrete patio. Rushed to the hospital; a child is born. Ross believes one was taken… there were supposed to be twins. She believes there were supposed to be twins.
A few months later and Brian Cox and Alice Krige are the hosts of a party. All seems, well. Later on, back home, Ross (Rosalind) is obsessed with her missing child. She’s found in the middle of the night, scraping the wallpaper off saying, “I need to get him out!” Will believes she’s dreaming and takes her back to bed. She visits a cemetery. A grave remembering nameless babies. “He’s there!” she tells Will. “He’s there…”
Ross is a troubled mother, a woman with depression. A package comes and Will puts it under a table in the foyer before he leaves on a business trip. When he comes home finds Ross, the twin girls, and his baby son, gone! Will begins his search. The package that came was a movie camera and slide negatives that came from Normandy. Will being the photographer, develops the negatives. A phone call from one of his daughters. The ocean’s heard in the background. They tell him to come and help mommy. He goes to Bel Reve and finds the twins by the sea collecting shells in a baby carriage. Amedeau’s baby carriage. Bel Reve (Beautiful Dreams in French) is an old boarded up house and there, he finds Ross upstairs in a corner.
This is a sad tale of a woman who suffers from a mental illness. This is story goes deeper and the pain that Ross endures, which stems from when she was a teenager and how Will must deal with something, he had no clue of what happened, drives him to help his wife. People with mental illness, some, not all, deny it and feel that they can overcome their ills. They stop taking their medications. But a woman who is pregnant, stops taking her medications to protect her unborn child, is a choice. This is the issue that Ross faces.
Then there are those that feel that they must protect the ones they love. Making decisions where they have no business making. They decide what’s best when, they simply want to protect themselves and blame others.
This film is a marvelous work. It explores the issues of mental illness but not that of the person who suffers from it but from the perspective of why they suffer and who was responsible for their suffering. Those that threaten do so to protect themselves and not the ones that need the protecting because in the end; shhhh… you’re in the Bay of Silence and that is how you’re supposed to remain.
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5617312/reference
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebayofsilencefilm/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebayofsilence?lang=en
Trailer: https://youtu.be/F7mVOJrl1z4
