by Gary M. Kramer, Staff Writer

Speak No Evil, which has its world premiere this week at the Sundance Film Festival, is a wonderfully uncomfortable experience. Bjørn (Morten Burian) and Louise (Sidsel Siem Koch) are a Danish couple travelling in Tuscany with their daughter, Agnes (Liva Forsberg). When they meet Dutch tourists Patrick (Fedja van Huêt) and Karin (Karina Smulders) and their son, Abel (Marius Damslev) they all get along quite well. So, when Patrick and Karin extend an offer for Bjørn and his family to visit, the Danish couple agree—it would be impolite to decline—even if they don’t know the Dutch couple very well. 

Writer/director Christian Tafdrup creates a series of awkward encounters over the tense weekend, from Patrick offering the pescatarian Louise some meat, to more distressing situations involving interactions with the children. But when Bjørn and Louise decide to cut their visit short, the real trouble begins. Tafdrup’s slow burn thriller puts viewers in the “what would you do?” situation, as it builds to a disturbing finale. 

The filmmaker spoke with MovieJawn about bad behavior and his chilling new film.

Gary M. Kramer (GK): Christian, I’m not master of tact. Will you be polite in this interview? 

Christian Tafdrup (CT): I’m definitely a very polite Danish man. I will not be vicious in any way. I appreciate you reached out to me to talk about this movie. I am grateful for your interest. 

GK: Where did you come up with the idea for Speak No Evil, and decide on the incidents that create the dramatic tension between the families? They speak volumes about the characters behaving badly but also on the folks such scenes who are uncomfortable. 

CT: I’ve been in this situation many times, especially as a child with my parents, socializing on vacation. We became holiday friends with [families], and sometimes invited them to visit us half a year later—and sometimes we did. We ended up being with people will didn’t know that well. It wasn’t a nightmare, like in the film, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience because we were not on neutral ground. We were getting bored, but we didn’t say anything. You want to be polite. 

I had an experience with my own daughters. We went to Italy a couple of years ago and met a Dutch couple. I built the story around that. I started to imagine, with my brother, whom I write with, what would have happened if I had gone to this place with these Dutch people who, on the surface were nice, but underneath were a little creepy. We came up with a lot of interesting ideas for when you are a guest at someone’s house. We immediately thought this could be a horror movie. So, let’s write it as a horror movie where the worst thing that could happen, happens. We started from that idea. It was a funny premise for a film. After that, I started to recognize how I personally react to things, and how people around me react—which is very passive. We want to behave, and keep up appearances, and be good people, and rely on what society dictates about how to be instead of listening to how we really feel. I have been afraid of being impolite and didn’t dare to put myself in situations that involve conflict. Social behavior is such a fun subject!

GK: I expect there are some cultural references in the film that might go over the heads of Americans. What are the differences between Danes and the Dutch, or why were they good foils?

CT: Mainly because as a Dane, you are always friends with the Dutch on holiday. They are very jovial, but the Dutch are even more crazy than Danes. The Swedish are boring, more introverted, and have less humor. The Dutch and Belgian people are the ones you hang out with. This is my own cliché about Dutch people that on the surface they are fun and nice but there is something about them that is very weird. What you see is not what you get. 

We also wanted the place [where much of the film is set] to be like hell. Not beautiful, flat with fields. It should be a lousy place in the middle of Europe. We saw the film as an opera, very mythical. Italy [where it opens] is Heaven; Denmark is limbo; and Holland is Hell. We thought about the journey into the darkness. And Holland was a perfect, boring place to shoot. Living safely as a Western civilized human being, we don’t have terror attacks or earthquakes. We don’t meet evilness that much, so we don’t recognize it when we meet people who want to do bad things to us. And we don’t have the tools to stand up against it. We can’t recognize and act towards evil because we live in safe environments. Do we know ourselves? Because we want to keep up appearances, we are not in contact with our inner darkness. So, there were themes about being nice, but the world isn’t always nice. 

GK: What are your thoughts about civility and respect? 

CT: Thinking about how Hitler came to power, everyone wanted to believe he was the best, and this man is not lying, but he was fooling everyone! Same with Trump! You can take this mechanism and put different -isms and politics, or nature, and cultural differences, but it is all about not standing up for your gut feeling. We have a society, especially in Denmark, that is very politically correct, where everyone is talking about not offending anyone and behaving nicely and being respectful and accepting gender politics no matter what—and I am a big supporter of that—but how would you react in a world that is not always nice and polite and accepting of us all?

GK: The characters are often hypocritical, which can be very funny.

CT: We thought about that building the characters. We have an idea of how we are, and how you want to be. Right now, we have to be healthy, not fly, maintain a good appearance, but we aren’t not like that, it’s just proper manners. It was the idea of what you look like and how you appear and what you really are. Bjørn is a very good dad, with a fine life, and he is a good husband, but there’s a reason he stands there in the window looking at darkness longing for something. If you live a safe life, eat the right food, have the right friends, you long for catastrophes. The purpose for them to go to Holland is to feel themselves. In the beginning of the film, they are well-dressed and in Italy, but in the end, they are naked. 

GK: Moreover, the characters lie to themselves, to each other, which is great…

CT: There is something liberating about meeting people who just say how they feel and what they think. Bjørn is attracted to that, because he mirrors Patrick. When you are so disguised in the perfect life, and are bored, you fall in love with people who have an easy time, who say one thing and lie, or yell at their child, or go against normative ways of behaving. We had a fun time with Patrick—who is this guy? In the end, he was the devil, an allegory for evilness. He was such a fun character to write, because he could do anything. His wife is the most cold, evil person of both of them. The Dutch actors are married in real life, so it was fun to play on their relationship and the tension between them in real life.  

GK: How do you diffuse an awkward moment? What observations do you have about tact? 

CT: My father is from high society and my mother is working-class, so I am in the middle of tact and not tact. I’m polite, I like to socialize, and I love manners. I love social rules actually, but I also think it’s an absurdity that we have so many things we expect from each other. We have to break the rules to get along with people sometimes. I love the awkwardness of keeping up a facade or feeling differently, or when a fight is brewing, or when you have an argument. Unlike in America, in Denmark or Sweden, you don’t express your feelings—there is something going on between lines. It is dictated how you should behave. I like that, but it frightens me—Do we know who we really are? I love the awkwardness, and think it is fun. I love in cinema when you want to look away but have to watch. We can’t just respect everything all the time. I don’t know if I could not have written this film if I was not dictated by proper manner. But it is necessary to get through life. If we were all like Patrick, what would the world look like?

GK: The film pivots on a moment where Bjørn makes a critical decision. How do you want audiences to respond in this moment? 

CT: These people are not like Americans who find secret powers when they meet evil people. They freeze and make the wrong decisions. That is recognizable from real life. It was a critical moment. First, Bjørn does a lot for his child, and his decision is based on an idea of masculinity. He does what he does to prove that he is masculine. Second, it is a genre thing. You are supposed to scream at him. But I’ve been in a similar situation many times. He did it so hell wouldn’t break loose. 

GK: My favorite scene is in the car with Bjørn and Patrick. They are making small talk and trying to bond, and then all of a sudden, Patrick gets Bjørn to open up emotionally and it’s staggering. Can you talk about creating this delicate tone, that walks a tightrope?

CT: It’s a crucial scene because I needed a scene for Bjørn to describe how he really feels. Who is this guy? We use words to show what’s going on inside him. We build up to this scene because we see his life in Denmark, where he is filled with boredom. He does all the right things, but he hates it. He hates this couple they have dinner with, he hates playing racquetball. Now he has met a guy who is totally the opposite. We kind of wrote it as a love scene, and he’s losing his control and his façade and dives into himself. Morton, who plays Bjørn, had a hangover when we shot and that made him so vulnerable, so it was very easy scene because he was in this extremely emotional state of mind. There is an erotic feeling to that scene. Patrick is Bjørn’s dark side; he needs to open up. 

GK: Likewise, the film’s images are very strong, with many scenes utilizing darkness and shadow to create unsettling moments. Like Patrick spying on the Danish couple through a window. But you also feature ominous music in scenes of bright sunshine. Can you talk about the visuals?

CT: I think of the film as Patrick is doing good for these people. He has a plan for these bourgeoisie people who don’t feel anything that they should put down their masks. He is spying on them because his project is working. Creating the visuals—I wanted it to feel real. There are horror movies that feel supernatural, but the scare here is for audiences is for them to feel up there on the screen with characters and is recognizable. I wanted to give it a naturalistic feeling and then give it a lift because it is a genre film. We worked with the heaven, limbo, and hell thought and that it should be an opera with big movements—a journey from brightness into darkness. We wanted to open in paradise. We created atmosphere in the different settings. Everything has to be lifted. We worked with production designer to look at biblical and mythical stuff to create a bigger story under a banal chamber drama to get the genre feeling. Good and evil, life and death, devil and angels—all that is there.

Speak No Evil premieres at Sundance 2022, Saturday, January 22 at 1:55AM eastern and will have a second screening on Sunday, January 23 at 10am eastern. Tickets are available here.