"Quiet Room"

Author(s): Sergio
Location: Spain

"Quiet Room"

Directed by David Lynch
Written by David Lynch
Music by Angelo Badalamenti
Cinematography by Peter Deming
Edited by Mary Sweeney

Main Cast

Jennifer Connelly as Alice
Robin Wright Penn as Ely
Justin Theroux as Mario
Peter Sarsgaard as David
Sheryl Lee as Olivia
Udo Kier as the Father
James Marshall as the Man
&
John Malkovich as the Editor

Tagline: "We all have a book in the inside"

Synopsis: Alice wants to flee from her past and she needs a new place to live, so when she found an announcement in the paper about a quiet room in rent she knew she really could start a new life. She is a book illustrator though she hates reading. Now she hasn’t got a job and she is absolutely alone. Her husband, David, has gone away with her twin sister and it has caused a great mental disorder on her.

The quiet room owners are a writer, Mario, and his fiancé and muse Ely. The room seems to be quiet and perfect but Alice can’t sleep the first night because there is something disturbing her below the mattress. She puts the hand and finds a book with no cover. Almost every page of the book has something handwritten: requests, prays, and desires from many different people. She can’t stop reading all the wishes and she spends all the night with the strange book. But, who has written this? Why? In one of the pages she finds a woman’s photograph with a written name: “Olivia”. Alice feels great curiosity and decides to write (as a joke) her own desire: "I want to find a job". The following morning a phone call wakes up Alice, it’s an important publishing looking for a new illustrator. Chance? Alice wants to think that it is not a chance and she gets obsessed with the book and hides it. Alice tries to approach Ely but she is not very communicative, and Mario, always enclosed in his writing room, tells Alice that Ely is not very sociable and that both are crossing a little crisis. Alice feels alone and she resorts to the book. She knows that it can be silly but she puts a photograph of David in the book with the phrase: “love me again”. Somebody whispers her name the following morning. It seems to be David but she opens her eyes and there wasn’t anybody in the room. She receives a phone call but it’s not David, it’s her sister warning about David disappearance. Her sister wants to know if he is with her and Alice lies affirming it. Mario and Ely fight more often every day and it provokes a depression to Ely. Alice thinks that the book is the solution for that and she use it to manipulating people states of mind. Alice starts getting success with people behaviour towards her. Ely changes radically and they became very good friends and she introduces Alice in an odd circle of people with many other disorders that use Ely as a muse too, but Alice wants more. Mario and Ely get better than ever and she feels a big envy. She writes in the book in order that Mario feels attracted for her and it works. Alice has got obsessed with Mario and his room, full of books and manuscripts, where she discovers other book without cover, like hers, but with the name of David handwritten. She discovers that “Olivia” was the former tenant, mysteriously missing one month ago. Mario becomes a big confidant for Alice, they start a secret relationship and she forces him to write in the book that he will love her forever. But nothing is what it seems.

A blocked writer who needs new stories, a muse without inspiration, the pressure of an editor without patience… and the victim of a plot, thought meticulously by the two vampiric minds of Mario and Ely, capable to everything for their survival. Capable to manipulate, to lie, to love, have sex, in order to find new stories to write. Alice discovers the plot joining several clues but she still trusts in the power of the book and she puts her own picture inside writing: I don’t want to be alone anymore. She close her eyes being captured by the book remaining in the quiet room forever, a crowded room full of former real person turned into characters.

Mario has finished his new book called “Alice”. The editor congratulates him for his great job. Meanwhile Ely shows the room to a man fleeing from another life, another story to be told.

What the Press would say:

***This may contain spoilers***

Maybe, in this case, a synopsis could be clearest than a thousand images because definitively I think I have seen a different movie. That’s the point of “Quiet Room” because there are many different stories inside this enigmatic puzzle. This may seem a fantastic film with a magical book of wishes but that is not the reality, we discover the truth at the same time that Alice does. Maybe we should need a few clues:

The Book: It is the door between two worlds or states of mind. Has it the magical powers that everybody believes? No, but it has the power of the suggestion and Mario & Ely use it to manipulate people. But maybe the book is manipulating them too. Alice hates to read and she was more interested in what people have written, than in the story of the book, the story of Olivia.

Olivia (Sheryl Lee): Former tenant, mysteriously missing and a presence in the room (or in Alice’s mind). Alice believes that she guides her to find the clues and keys to discover the plot but Olivia is dead.

David (Peter Sarsgaard): He disappears when Alice put his picture in the book. From that moment he turns into a book and gets trapped in the room too, or maybe he has been tortured until death to get some information for a new book.

The father (Udo Kier): He calls Alice to tell her that there is nothing to forgive, that he’s ok. But he has been dead for years. He appears when Alice asks the book for her father forgiveness.

The Twin Sister: She doesn’t exist. It’s the part of her that loved her husband. Alice had a bipolar disorder when her husband starts having sex with other women.

The Room: Observatory of human behavior, refuge for the lost souls, purgatory. The book is nothing without the room and vice versa. The spider web where the owners observe and listen the life of the others. Everything happens in the room.

Alice (Jennifer Connelly): Is everything real? Is she imagining everything? She falls down in the trap. She thinks that she can control everything and everybody but it is not true. She discovers that Mario writes in the book that she will be forever alone. The act of putting her own picture into the book is the representation of her own death, killing herself. Then she remains in the room but with all the rest of the people related with the book: David, Olivia, her father…

FYC:

Best Picture
Best Director: David Lynch
Best Original Screenplay: David Lynch
Best Leading Actress: Jennifer Connelly
Best Supporting Actress: Robin Wright Penn
Best Supporting Actor: Justin Theroux