The Quiet Room

Dutch-Australian director Rolf de Heer's second film is a vision of a quickly dissolving marriage as seen through the eyes of a seven-year-old child. Chloe Ferguson (de Heer's real-life daughter) stars as a nameless little girl who withdraws completely into herself and refuses to speak as the level of animosity between her mother (Celine O'Leary) and father (Paul Blackwell) moves them inexorably closer to divorce. The girl's voice is heard, however, as narration, in which she describes her increasing alienation from the squabbling adults who are becoming more self absorbed, and more childish, than their child. Her only refuge is her blue-walled room, a fantasyland of goldfish and Barbie dolls that don't bicker, where she can remember happier days when she as three, or dream of a pet dog and a house in the country. The theme of an immature soul trapped by family within the confines of a home thematically mirrored de Heer's more controversial previous film Bad Boy Bubby (1993), which did not find North American distribution.