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Sweden, 2018. A mysterious syndrome is affecting refugee children.
In the hope of a better life, Sergei, Natalia and their two daughters were forced to flee their homeland. Despite their best efforts to integrate and embody the model family, their asylum application is rejected. Suddenly,Katja, their youngest daughter, collapses and falls into a coma. They will then fight, to the point of the unthinkable, for their daughter to wake up...
Shot between Estonia, Sweden and Finland, the film Quiet Life opens with a very theatrical and mysterious shot in which the four members of the family introduce themselves to the camera as if taking their final bow at the end of a show. Olympia Mytilinaiou explains this choice : "Alexandros Avranas, the director, wanted to open his film by presenting his protagonists as soldiers who were being brought in for trial. A kind of social judgement for this family. We then discover the house in which they live, which was filmed a little like a prison cell. The symmetry, and especially the kind of emotional façade that parents and children must maintain in front of immigration officials, reinforces this feeling of a play in the opening scene. They are all playing a role in this prison-like flat, where some of the doors are controlled by code locks to prevent them from using them in their daily lives. I think it was very important for us to immediately establish the plot and context of this kind of captivity... in this almost theatrical setting. All the interiors were shot in Estonia, trying to maintain this prison-like feeling from scene to scene. Take, for example, the scene that follows with the interview at the immigration office. There they are placed in a small room, and when the negative verdict is delivered and the father stands up, on the verge of tears, they find themselves like defendants in a murder case, (the family get in the office from one door and the immigrasion officer getting up and leaving them alone left from another door, locked in. It’s a situation we ourselves observed during a location scout in a real office while preparing for the film. It was an extremely cruel moment that affected me deeply."
This transposition to the screen of a cold and disciplined Sweden also evokes the great tradition of science fiction films, where the colour palette is often very limited. When asked about this choice, the director of photography explains : "The production designer and costume designer did a very good job of helping me transpose Alexandros’s prison-like vision of the story. But I must also emphasise the importance of the work of Elsa Levo, our head make-up artist. It’s a role that is sometimes overlooked, but she was also able to fit into this strong artistic direction and this sometimes delicate palette of skin tones between greys and cyans. When you’re working on such a difficult and upsetting subject, it’s essential that the whole team is on the same wavelength. And it was extremely moving to see this subject brought to life and brought to the screen by so many different people. Just imagine, every day on set we were working alongside Greeks like Alexandros and myself, as well as Finns, Estonians, Swedes and French people in production... It was like a microcosm of the European Union on the scale of this film !"
When asked about her visual choices, Olympia Mytilinaiou admits that she initially had a lot of questions about her own intimate and physical relationship with sunlight. "I come from one of the sunniest countries in Europe. In Greece, the sun shines almost every day, even in winter, and has been a part of our lives since childhood. When Alexandros suggested I make this film, in this Scandinavian context, I immediately wondered how I was going to deal with this virtual absence of direct sunlight, or at least this soft, enveloping northern light. The other factor I had to take into consideration was the almost constant presence of our two young actresses in the shots. As we know, filming with children imposes quite a few restrictions on set, which is why all the night scenes with them had to be shot during the day, completely isolating the apartment set from the outside (also we had to have open space for the movments of the camera). I think it works, even if it’s inevitably less realistic than filming with real outdoor urban night-time locations. The entire film was shot on location,with the exception of the scenes set in the immigration offices, which were recreated in a studio in Tallinn."
Another very distinctive choice of location and staging was the hospital, this time chosen in Finland. This location becomes central to the middle of the film, where the younger of the two sisters finds herself isolated from her parents. "Among the scenes in this hospital, the biggest challenge was the large room where the parents’ “smile rehabilitation” takes place.
It was, of course, the spectacular view of the Finnish forest that immediately attracted us to this location. You could say it’s almost more like an exterior daytime scene... indoors. With a fairly strong light amplitude between the characters and the discovery. I have 35 years of experience behind me, so I come from a film background. At that time, we have the extraordinary exposure latitude that the Alexa 35 camera have17 f-stop and help me to have the averege 5 or 6,5 f-stops to the color corection. This kind of scene is therefore much easier to manage. The forest is set 5,6 f-stops above the face. This allows me to almost not re-light the actors and avoid reflections in the bay windows..."
"At other times, I also used M90s placed outside the hospital, as in the scenes in the head doctor’s office. In any case, it was very important for us to open up the space as much as possible in these scenes. To break visually with the beginning of the film, which takes place mainly in very confined spaces, such as the flat or the immigration offices. It was a way of paradoxically offering a kind of liberation to the protagonists... at the same time as they realise that they are even more trapped by the system."
In the final act, Sergei and his wife decide to flee with their children, convinced that reuniting the family is the only way to free them from the syndrome they are suffering from. Among these scenes, a long interior shot of a moving car suddenly brings joy and hope back to their faces. "Another of Alexandros’ staging ideas", explains the director of photography. "They’re all wearing sunglasses in this shot, which gives it an almost burlesque feel. To shoot this sequence, I mainly let the sunlight do its work inside the car and only helped with DMG Dash on the kids."
"The scene takes place in a car park, and there were skylights that allowed me to get regular, very graphic sunlight. We used the same technique but with a m90 to help the sun when they get out of the car, each carrying a child in their arms and stopping in the sunlight. In these shots, I didn’t use any diffusion frames, because the daylight was really soft that day... The camera was mounted on the front, very simply with a car mount. It was my way of embracing a certain simplicity in this scene, of taking advantage of the particularities of the setting above all else. I think that’s often how I approach each scene, making the most of what the setting has to offer. This sequence is crucial for me, because it’s the moment when you feel hope returning a little. And when the adults, especially the father, rediscover the tenderness and kindness they may have lost with their daughters."
One of the last scene in the film, in a swimming pool, is very powerful. "For this scene, which I really like and which we shot in a Swedish swimming pool, the grip team installed a lighting bridge across the pool, similar to those used for concert installations. Placed on a dolly and stabilised by the Trinity system, the camera was able to move across the surface of the water, following the actors as they progressed. For the lighting, I installed a series of Arri Orbiters to illuminate this vast set and highlight the reflections on the surface of the water.”
(Interview by François Reumont for the AFC)
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