‘Silent Friend’ movie review: Tony Leung gets In the Mood for a Gingko Tree in Ildikó Enyedi’s strange, sensual wonder

One of my favourite books increasing up was Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. The deceptively gentle communicative of a lad increasing up alongside a histrion projected a extremist thought astir companionship — that a histrion tin observe a quality beingness crossed decades and connection a wordless benignant of devotion that evolves with our needs. The peculiar small publication seemed to recognize that the flora astir america often inhabit the relation of soundless witnesses to our lives with a patience nary quality narration tin rather match. Watching Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi’s Silent Friend, I recovered myself reasoning astir Silverstein again. A chap storyteller from Hungarian soil, Enyedi builds an full diagnostic astir that aforesaid intergenerational intimacy betwixt humans and plants, imagining a histrion arsenic a quiescent companion that absorbs anxieties, curiosities and desires without judgement.

Premiering successful contention astatine the Venice Film Festival earlier travelling the planetary circuit, Silent Friend yet reached Delhi done the 7th variation of the Habitat International Film Festival, wherever I caught it successful a packed Stein auditorium. The movie is simply a triptych that unfolds crossed much than a period astir a azygous ginkgo histrion successful the botanical gardens of Philipps University of Marburg, Germany. Each epoch introduces a caller protagonist whose beingness drifts into orbit astir the tree. The formed moves betwixt generations and continents: Tony Leung plays a visiting neuroscientist stranded successful Germany during the pandemic, Luna Wedler appears arsenic a pioneering pistillate pupil astatine the assemblage navigating world hostility successful the aboriginal 20th century, and Enzo Brumm portrays a shy ‘70s lit pupil amidst his romanticist awakening. Léa Seydoux, too, appears successful a tiny yet pivotal relation arsenic a botanist researching works communication. Enyedi, whose earlier films see the Golden Bear victor On Body and Soul and the maritime romanticist play The Story of My Wife, approaches the worldly with the aforesaid fascination for unseen affectional ecosystems that has defined her oevre.

The present-day strand belongs to Tony Wong, played by Leung with a melancholic grace that transforms regular gestures into subtler drama. Wong arrives successful Marburg to survey babe encephalon activity, lone to find his probe halted erstwhile COVID empties the field and strands him successful adjacent full isolation. The movie introduces him wandering done the assemblage arsenic a solitary fig whose curiosity gradually drifts toward the ginkgo histrion lasting extracurricular the laboratory buildings. Wong begins measuring the tree’s micro-movements done sensors portion corresponding online with Seydoux’s French researcher, who studies works communication. A telling representation of intelligence loneliness shaped by curiosity emerges done Leung’s performance. Wong searches for signals of consciousness successful the histrion due to the fact that the hunt itself offers companionship, and Leung’s restrained physicality conveys the ache of a caput trying to converse with thing that cannot answer.

One of the film’s astir memorable passages arrives aboriginal erstwhile Wong delivers a lecture connected quality attraction and cognition to a tiny assemblage audience. The lecture explores however consciousness filters world done selective focus, proposing that full dimensions of beingness stay invisible due to the fact that quality cognition has ne'er evolved to registry them. Sitting successful the auditorium portion this lecture unfolded created a funny reflector effect due to the fact that I recovered myself contemplating the aforesaid limits of cognition that Wong describes, arsenic portion of the audience. Enyedi frames the series with a calm clarity, allowing the philosophical ideas to look done accessible connection and ocular illustrations, and the country carries the pleasures of attending a genuinely inspired lecture wherever the enactment of reasoning becomes its ain signifier of storytelling.

The movie past travels backwards to 1908, wherever Luna Wedler’s Grete enters the assemblage arsenic its archetypal pistillate subject student. Enyedi presents this epoch successful crisp black-and-white cinematography that evokes aboriginal 20th period photography portion besides reinforcing the rigid intelligence clime Grete indispensable navigate. Her instauration is done a tense assemblage interrogation wherever a sheet of antheral chauvinist professors attempts to humiliate her with questions astir works reproduction that rapidly descent into invasive speculation astir pistillate sexuality. Wedler plays the country with a clenched fist, answering each question calmly portion exposing the intelligence insecurity beneath the professors’ authority.

Grete’s conflict continues erstwhile gossip astir her chastity forces her from her lodgings, leaving her to moonlight arsenic an adjunct to a section lensman whose enthusiasm for the mechanics and artistry of aboriginal photography borders connected evangelical. The revelation for Grete comes done the enactment of looking itself. Behind the camera, she transforms assorted plants and vegetation from world specimens into subjects of fascination, arsenic her frames isolate their stems, textures and petals with an astir sensual clarity. Enyedi treats photography arsenic liberation for her. The camera grants Grete authorization implicit reflection successful a satellite that repeatedly questions her intellect, allowing her curiosity to determination freely portion the representation itself becomes impervious of what she sees.

The 1972 storyline introduces Enzo Brumm’s Hannes, a workplace lad studying lit astatine the assemblage who feels socially retired of measurement with his much politically assertive classmates. His quiescent temperament draws the attraction of Gundula, a botany pupil whose experimental apparatus measures the reactions of a geranium placed beside her window. Their flirtations unfold done playful teasing and shared curiosity until Gundula leaves municipality concisely and entrusts Hannes with maintaining the experiment. The favour evolves into thing much idiosyncratic arsenic Hannes begins observing the geranium with a premix of technological attraction and affectional projection. Brumm captures the awkward tenderness of discovered intimacy, treating the works with a bashful devotion that echoes his feelings for Gundula successful absentia.

Across these 3 narratives, Enyedi constructs a meditation connected humanity’s agelong entanglement with the botanical world. The ever-present ginkgo histrion bears witnesser to intelligence change, observing Grete’s conflict for world recognition, Hannes’s tentative curiosity, and Wong’s technological experiments successful the 21st century. The movie often reflects connected the vulnerability of technological discovery, which repeatedly encounters scepticism and organization absorption earlier caller ideas settee into accepted knowledge. Grete’s confrontation with misogyny, Seydoux’s enthusiasm, and the persistent beingness of pistillate plants and trees besides found a dialog astir sex wrong intelligence spaces. Each storyline suggests that cognition grows done observation, patience and openness to forms of beingness that quality civilization has historically overlooked.

But what truly sneaks up connected you successful Silent Friend is however unexpectedly erotic the full endeavor becomes erstwhile Enyedi lets her thesis tally wild, and each arc nudges guardant a mischievous sensuality pulsing beneath it by degrees. Grete escapes the leering scrutiny of the men astir her by turning her regard toward plants, wherever the camera allows her to survey curves, textures and reproductive mysteries without anyone policing the questions she asks. Hannes channels his infatuation with Gundula into an affectionate attentiveness toward her geranium, watching it with the absorbed delight of a young lover.

Wong becomes the logical endpoint of the peculiar ecosystem Enyedi cultivates crossed her 3 timelines. When pandemic isolation leaves him with lone the histrion (and a curmudgeonly gardener) for company, his increasing fascination with works consciousness gradually mutates into what tin lone beryllium described arsenic a sapiosexual fascination, earlier drifting into thing adjacent much euphoric erstwhile his experiments commencement triggering psychedelic sensory responses from the tree. Leung plays the full arc with that acquainted yearning that erstwhile defined In the Mood for Love (except this clip the entity of devotion happens to beryllium a 200-year-old ginkgo alternatively than Maggie Cheung), which produces the baffling representation of a grown antheral conducting the astir sincere and tender courtships with a histrion imaginable.

I archetypal heard astir Silent Friend erstwhile Luca Guadagnino reportedly called it his favourite movie of 2025, and watching it present clarifies that endorsement with embarrassing speed. Enyedi has created 1 of the year’s astir eccentric cinematic seductions — a portion of arboreal erotica that would permission your section trees blushing done their leaves.

Silent Friend premiered successful Delhi astatine the Habitat International Film Festival (HIFF), hosted astatine the India Habitat Centre (IHC).