Based on the novel of the same name, The Bay of Silence is set to arrive on home entertainment platforms from 28th September. Starring Claes Bang, Olga Kurylenko, and Brian Cox, it’s a mysterious and heart-wrenching thriller that ventures into some extremely dark areas. Bang leads the film as Will, a happy-go-lucky guy who has everything: the beautiful wife, great career, lovely house, cute step-daughters, and an adorable new baby. His world gets turned upside down however, after his wife Rosalind (Kurylenko) vanishes with the children. He eventually tracks her down, but discovers that their young son has passed away under strange circumstances. With his wife rendered almost catatonic with grief, Will is left in the impossible situation of getting to the bottom of what happened. As more evidence comes to light, it appears more and more likely that Rosalind had a hand in their son’s fate, but could Will really have fallen for such a cruel woman, or is something more sinister at play?
It’s a fantastic film, buoyed by excellent performances and a slowly unravelling mystery that commands your attention. What makes The Bay of Silence really interesting though, is that it was adapted for screen by actor Caroline Goodall. Goodall has had a long career, starting out in productions with the Royal Shakespeare Company before moving on to star in several high-profile movies including Cliffhanger, Schindler’s List, and Hook. She has always had a keen interest in the written word, attending Bristol University and getting a degree in English Literature and Drama; The Bay of Silence marks her feature film writing debut. Clearly not adverse to hard work, she also took on the producing reins for the project, and even appears on screen in a supporting role. The Bay of Silence is obviously somewhat of a passion project and so we were thrilled when we were able to sit down and discuss the film with her.
As well as acting in The Bay of Silence, you also adapted the source material and served as producer, what was it about the book that inspired you?
I had always loved the book. Lisa St Aubin de Terán actually had a very colourful life herself. Her most famous books are Slow Train to Milan and Keepers of the House, and this is a slightly different book for her. But it is based on truth. I live not very far away from the Bay of Silence in Italy – I married an Italian cinematographer – and I read the book there, in the Bay of Silence, and of course it really haunted me. It deals with this central dilemma of what would you do? What choice would you make when faced with possibly the most impossible choice in your life? Everything spins out from there. So it was that fundamental event really that got me thinking. It felt very like the movies I love, The Vanishing for example, and Don’t Look Now. I love those deep, dark psychological thrillers. I wasn’t seeing too many of them being made and thought I’d like to have a go at seeing how I can adapt this book, which in fact was written from two points of view. It’s a little bit more meditative. I contacted Lisa and I asked her if we could make it more of a thriller and how she’d feel about a mystery thriller seen through one person’s point of view – which is Will’s – in order to make it more linear. She just gave me her blessing and said, ‘go for it’. I was really thrilled by that.
It’s funny, I was doing some research and there are so many; in fact most films, are about madness. It’s quite interesting. I think it has something to do with the artist and how madness and art are intrinsically entwined. That’s why we are always fascinated by madness. It’s got everything in there. If you look at Vertigo, if you look at Don’t Look Now. I was actually just listing all the films about madness, there’s Silver Linings Playbook, there’s Black Swan, Girl, Interrupted, there’s Rain Main, A Beautiful Mind, they’re all different genres, but to some extent are dealing with the same question. I thought that was quite fascinating.
Where do you start when adapting a novel? It must be difficult trying to work out what to keep, cut, and change?
Sometimes it’s just an image that kick-starts you. I just had this image – not for any spoilers – of twins on a beach and an old fashioned pram. A man walking towards them not knowing what he’ll find. That image to me was the central image. There’s such isolation in it, and potential and mystery. Often it’s when you start in the middle and then you work backwards and forwards, you find your through-line. Of course Don’t Look Now and The Vanishing for me were real touchstones because they deal with very similar material. I really wanted to get a sense of a Hitchockian linear approach. There are a lot of Hitchockian references in there such as the Macguffin, the locked suitcase, a man who is thrown into extraordinary circumstances and he’s got to fight his way out. There’s a mysterious woman, there’s the secret antagonist. It’s all very deep in there.
I was just really happy that I got to write this and I got to see it made, and had such a wonderful director, and a woman director. I really wanted a woman director because, ironically, the film is seen through a man’s eyes. Women should be able to write for men and women, and I’m really not keen on the ghettoisation of a women’s film therefore has to be seen through a woman’s eyes and the female gaze. I think we need to allow men, as they have so often described female experience, and we [women] should be able to describe male experience. We’ve had really amazingly positive responses from men, because they can see that they can also be part of this conversation. That they can be victims as well. Mental health, sexual abuse, and death of a child, they all affect everybody. They affect men just as they do women.
For me, it was pretty important that, when I did it, I wrote it through a man’s eyes. The other point is you have to have the mystery. If she is an unreliable witness, I didn’t want an unreliable witness, I wanted a reliable witness for this film. We couldn’t necessarily get inside her head because if we did we would not have a reliable yardstick of morality as we’re telling the film. I know there’s been a whole thing about unreliable witnesses and I always feel cheated when I get to the end of a movie or something and suddenly it switches around, switches point of view and I’m thinking, ‘ I didn’t have the information I was supposed to have, because you were lying to me’, which meant that the filmmaker was lying to me, and I don’t like that.
The film ventures into some really dark and almost taboo areas, how did you work on balancing the tone so that it never went too far?
Tone was something that we discussed constantly with Paula van der Oest, the director, and also Claes and Olga as well. It’s this knife edge that you’re walking. This balance that you’re trying to find. It’s not a horror movie in that sense. I call it a psychological mystery thriller. It’s a commercial thriller with an art-house heart really. We didn’t want to lose any of that effect. The most important, without spoilers, is when he arrives in Normandy and he literally goes down the rabbit-hole.
We were very clear about finding three different worlds in which our characters inhabit. The first world is the world of Italy. It’s a world of light and magic, and potential and love. Even the London we find ourselves in at the beginning is a very normal London…well certainly the London we used to know. By the time he gets to Normandy, it’s almost Gothic. The camera and the cinematography is mirroring that, so that we go into this strange other world of the unknown with Will. Then when we get back to London, things have changed. It’s a scary place, it’s drained of colour. He’s starting to feel more paranoid and he’s trying to figure out what’s going on, what happened. I think the three different visual worlds really helped set the tone.
Claes Bang had a great start to the year with his portrayal of Dracula, but what was it about him that made you think he had what it took to play Will?
Well I saw Claes in The Square. We shot this in 2018, before he had landed Dracula. I was in Cannes and I saw a screening of The Square and I just felt there was my Will. Olga had already signed on. What was important about Olga was that you’ve got a person who is on one level an archetype, because that’s what she’s so good at portraying, and a mysterious person, but also someone that is rootless. You can’t quite define her. That’s what we needed for Rosalind. Brian I’d met at the Royal Shakespeare company in 1985 where he played my dad in Misalliance. He’s a great family friend and he’s such an actor’s actor. If you have Brian on your side, you will be attracting fantastic actors because everyone wants to work with Brian. I was just amazed that this brilliant Danish actor also spoke such good English. But he again had this archetypal look to him. This throwback to Jimmy Stewart sort of classic iconic look that we were really searching for.
It was tricky casting this part. One didn’t want someone who was so definable in a class, that you tend to find with the English. You get someone, and you immediately pigeon-hole them as a certain class or coming from a certain place. That was where Claes, for us, was just perfect. He’s also just a brilliant actor. He read the script, loved it and said, ‘when do we start?’ He fought for it and made time in his schedule for it, and I am forever grateful. They all worked so hard. It’s a really, really demanding role. I don’t think any actor…he kept saying, ‘usually I can dig deep and find that place. But the things that happen to Will, you wouldn’t want to happen to your worst enemy, and they certainly haven’t happened to me. I’ve never lost a child.’ Those moments were so brilliantly managed by him. I was there on that dark night where he’s digging in the beach. It was actually raining and it was cold and it was about midnight. We just lit the scene with a torch and it was devastating for all of us watching, and obviously very devastating when watching it on screen for the first time.
It’s also good to see Olga Kurylenko in a more dramatic role. She has almost been trapped in all these action heroine roles for the last few years. I’m guessing that was something that drew her in?
Oh, I think very much. I’m so thrilled, we’ve had fantastic reviews..when you’re writing or producing something you don’t really think about the end product. As an actor mainly myself, I’ve never really thought about the end product. I just like doing it. It’s all brand new to me. You have to wake up and read something about it. They love the cast. To have both The Hollywood Reporter and Variety – Variety was like a love letter to Claes – and everyone praises the acting, and I’m just so thrilled because acting is everything. Olga especially – they’ve said that this is a career defining moment.
She is incredibly well known in France and is known as being a very strong character actor, but not in the English language, and I think that’s what drew her [to this project]. She’s wonderful in Mara, I love her work. She can dig so deep. What she does here is she just very carefully, and I think very subtly, just places markers on this road to that point where we see her sitting there like an abandoned doll surrounded by the detritus of her past in this strange Gothic house. You see everything written in her face.
We actually shot that in London, in a pub (laughs), whilst it was 35 degrees; I think 40 degrees inside because it was an incredibly hot summer in 2018. Every time I see it, I forget where we actually shot it and I’m transported right to Normandy. She can just access these places. I feel very blessed.
What do you enjoy about producing and is it something you want to explore further?
Producing is a whole other game. I think the reason I did it is, basically I’m a certain age, I’m known for what I do as an actor. Actors aren’t necessarily trusted to be producers or writers just because they’re actors and have had experience. Often it goes the other way because actors traditionally are – I’m not sure why – kept in their box. They’re not allowed out of their box. So my feeling was – I think I need to learn this from the boots up. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be in a position where people will trust me with their money as a producer unless I really know what I’m doing inside out. I’ve always been fascinated by it. I think I was very inspired by Kathleen Kennedy. She was the first female producer I ever met when I did Hook with Steven Spielberg.
So I went to UCLA and I did a film finance course. I learned all about scheduling and budgeting. I wrote a business plan for this and I spent a number of years just going round the markets, like a foot soldier. All these big film festivals, building up my network, meeting sales agents and pitching the project, just like everybody else does. There’s no magic way into these things. It takes an enormous amount of hard work. I think I started to learn the language. I think what’s funny was when people used to say, ‘tell me what’s the film’s about’. You’d be in one of these meetings and I’d just lean forwards and give them the finance plan. Then you’d see them leaning forwards even closer, because that’s the code. It’s not what’s the film about, because all films are basically only three plots, it’s how you’re managing to put the thing together. How much tax credits? What is soft money? Who is your cast?
The value of talent is incredibly important when you’re putting together an independent film. Independent film financing is very different to studio film financing or going to a broadcaster and doing TV. They own the IP, they are commissioning you to do it, you’ll get a fee for it. In independent film, the producer is the engine of the whole thing and putting the whole thing together. You sell piecemeal the film, so you pre-sell thirty percent, you then find investors because you’ve shown that you’re market ready. You’re looking for the grant funding and the soft money. Which country can you get it from? This is a British film so of course it’s got the British tax credits, but we also have some investment from Holland because we have a Dutch director and DP, and she brought five of her main crew with her. We did post in Holland so we’d get the Benelux film fund…It’s literally like a little patchwork of putting things together. It’s chicken and egg. At the same time, you’re out to your cast saying, ‘please wait’. Then suddenly a piece of money falls out, an investor walks away because it didn’t happen soon enough…you wake up every morning sweating and you go to bed every night thinking, ‘I can’t keep doing this’. Then the next morning you wake up and think, ‘I think I’ve got another idea about how to get around that’…I think that’s the point where you realise I must be a producer.
In terms of directing, I don’t think…writing and directing maybe. I think I’d love that. But I take my hat off to directors, I truly do. I think it’s immensely intense work. But I also got very lucky in that I got very involved in the post production and so as the writer I had an enormous amount to say creatively. I just shadowed Paula as much as I could, I’ve worked with some fantastic directors, and perhaps one day, if I can’t find a director to do something I wrote, I’ll have to do it myself. That’s how most directors start.
One of your next projects listed on IMDB is Birds of Paradise, directed by one of my favourite new voices, Sarah Adina Smith, is there anything that you can share about the project?
I’ve just been in Hungary picking up the last two days of my part; about a week to ten days of shooting that was left because we were shut down on March 13th. I am still very much… I’ve got my day job as I joke to people, I’m still very much in front of the camera. That helps me support my producer habit as I call it. She is just quite fantastic. Just a wonderful director. We get on really well. I was thrilled that we were able to go back and finish. She’s just really cool. She wrote it as well. It’s a ballet movie, it’s a bit like Black Swan. I play the ambassador from America to France, and my daughter, Kristine Froseth, is an aspiring ballerina. Diana Silvers is in a way both her antagonist and her twin. It’s a rather dark and fascinating story.
It’s an Amazon project so it’s completely financed by Amazon, they are wonderfully behind her. I was just really thrilled to work with her. I’m just increasingly thrilled about the number of films that I am seeing, which are directed by and written by women as well as produced by women. I just think that something is happening and I hope it continues. I looked and I saw that out of all the films that I have made, and television, in my thirty year career six percent were written by women, and even less directed by women. That wasn’t because I was choosing projects for any other reason other than they came up or I really liked them. The conversation just hasn’t been there and increasingly it is. I was really proud and humbled to be able to work with Sarah.
The Bay of Silence is released on home entertainment platforms on Monday 28th September 2020.
