At his desk, Rolf de Heer always works with cards pinned to the wall with notes written on them. During the scriptwriting and in production on The Quiet Room, there was one card that de Heer constantly referred to.
On it was written a quote he had read in a magazine: In Greek tragedies, no one ever knew what the Gods had for breakfast. "It was there when I was writing, and when I was storyboarding, and when we were thinking about what colour to paint the room," says de Heer.
The room in question is seven-year-old Chloe's bedroom, where she retreats when the experience of her parents breaking up, their arguments and fights, all become too much to endure. In protest, Chloe stops speaking, but the audience are privy to her thoughts, which is how the film's title came about.
The Quiet Room is a touching and unusual drama in which de Heer explores Chloe's seven-year-old mind with the precision of a brain surgeon and the emotions of a loving father. He talked to his own children, especially his own seven-year-old, and drew on their reactions when he crafted the scrift.
"The film," says de Heer, "is about very ordinary things that happen in many households all over the world, but I had to be careful for it not to become a 'kitchen sink' drama." Even the colour of the room - finally a rich blue - was critical. "The most important issue in how to make the film look was the colour of the room. I think we repainted it twice," says the director. "Originally, it was much more conventional, a little ordinary…but I want people to think about it on a purely emotional level, relating to each other, rather than, 'What did I have for breakfast this morning?'"
Above all, The Quiet Room is about "the sanctity of childhood", and evidences de Heer's deeply-felt concerns about the way adults treat, and often underestimate, their offspring, notwithstanding his belief that "most kids have an extraordinary [inner] strength".
"What I was interested in was a seven-year-old's perception of adulthood," says de Heer. "As I had to give it some sort of structural format, it seemed to me that the marriage breakdown was the thing to do it through. There is a dynamic; there is a conflict; there are all sorts of possibilities. But where I began was with a seven-year-old's perception of adulthood."
Shot almost entirely at the South Australian Film Corporation in Adelaide, making the film proved to be a telling experience for the adult members of the cast, Paul Blackwell and Celine O'Leary, argues de Heer, "profoundly affecting them in the way they saw things". As for the crew, "there were times when they suddenly understood things about themselves and about others that they hadn't actually thought about before."
Working with a child actor, contrary to popular wisdom, was easy, even though Chloe Ferguson, playing the silent lead, had virtually no experience whatsoever. "I find that almost any kid can act," de Heer says. "It was a rapid learning curve as to how best to work with her, but the two adult actors were profoundly influential."
In his previous feature, Bad Boy Bubby (1993), de Heer explored the same territory, and curiously, given his passion for the theme, when asked about the film's meaning, de Heer replied: "Hell, I've never thought about its message!" Last year, de Heer's Epsilon made its market debut in Cannes, and with "generous" support from Miramax, the director has written some new material and re-shot some key scenes "to give it more context". Still awaiting its domestic release, it is presumed that the delay is attributable to the desire to capitalise on The Quiet Room and the director's exposure at the Cannes Film Festival.
It was in the time gap between Cannes 95 and the Epsilon re-shoot that de Heer found himself with time to make The Quiet Room, backed by the same financial partners - Italian producer Domenico Procacci and Rome-based international sales agent, Intrafilm.
His earlier films include Dingo (1990), with Miles Davis and Colin Friels, and Incident At Raven's Gate (1989), with Steven Vidler and Celine Griffin.
Andrew L. Urban
Prod Co: Vertigo/Fandango in association with Smile Productions (Rome), Marvel Movies, SBS Independent, South Australian Film Corporation
Prod: Rolf de Heer, Domenico Procacci
Dir/Scr: Rolf de Heer
Ph: Tony Clark
Prod des: Fiona Paterson
Art dir: Beverley Freeman
Mus: Graham Tardiff
Ed: Tania Nehme
Cast: Celine O'Leary, Paul Blackwell, Chloe Ferguson, Phoebe Ferguson
Running time: 93mins
Int sales: Intrafilm
