Quiet Life presents a Russian family seeking political asylum in Sweden after having fled after an attack on the patriarch. We are introduced to the family as the government residence they are staying in, while their case is being determined, is checked over. There are all kinds of code-locked doors, and signs encouraging types of conduct everywhere, as homey as they have made it, it is clearly a facility. We aren’t told why they are in the house, and the people looking over the house are cold to Sergei and Natalia (the parents, played by Grigoriy Dobrygin and Chulpan Khamatova). This scene was a great introduction to the world because they were treated like they had done something wrong and, at this point, you’d yet to be introduced to the world of the film so they could just as well be criminals in witness protection turning on bigger criminals in a safe house as anything else. But then they reveal another couple will join the house later that week, and it seems highly unlikely they would use a safe house for multiple parties. And then after a family dinner that is broken with laughter about Swedish names they will take, you are with them as they heartbreakingly discover that their application for political asylum has been denied.
The scene itself was a little long and spent too much time on exposition we did not need, because we got everything from their heartbreak at the denial and the actions they took afterwards. I understood the inclination to include it, to try and drive home what happened and explain why they did not have their youngest daughter Katja (played by Miroslava Pashutina) initially give testimony as a witness, in an attempt to protect her, so that we would understand that when they asked her, it was not done lightly. So, when Katja went into a “coma”, a condition known as Resignation Syndrome, we would be sympathetic towards them as they had tried to do everything to protect her, and then the same when eventually they put pressure on their other Alina to act as a witness in Katja’s stead in hopes to try and keep their family together and safe as Katja recovers. The decision to push another child to give testimony after their other child entered a coma after being asked to provide testimony might seem heartless or cruel but the film does a great job of painting them into corners. When they are at the hospital to find out about Katja’s condition, they are greeted by being told they were only just cleared of not drugging their daughter into a coma, once again treated as criminals, but are still blamed for her being in a coma due to them not being able to keep the stress of their asylum case from her. It is deemed as their failure alone. They are up against losing odds constantly but they keep trying their best, they might not always make the right choice, but they are trying, and they do care.
The film is placing a spotlight on a real condition that is still largely a mystery and one that according to the film’s accompanying text, “over the last few years, more than 700 children have
been diagnosed with the syndrome, in Sweden alone.” The post-credits reference that because of the wake of recent conflicts and mass displacements, the syndrome is expected to increase exponentially.
Finally, writer-director Alexandros Avranas and his co-writer Stavros Pamballis, were smart about making the asylum seekers the same race as the people they were seeking asylum from (in this case white), because we often see these stories coloured with the additional factor of racism but to see that stripped away, you still get to see the cruelty and don’t get to wave it away as the individual being racist, but that it’s an institution at large that can seem set up to punish those seeking asylum/refuge.
Quiet Life had its World Premiere at the 81st Venice Film Festival in the Horizons Section.
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