The transience of human life becomes uncomfortably personal when a parent's health starts to fail. We don't like talking about it, but doesn't that make the impact even worse? Tom Lanoye does talk about it in Speechless.

The book is a tribute to his mother, a butcher's wife and amateur tragedienne who loses her speech and self-sufficiency after a stroke. The film adaptation is receiving a lot of attention in the media and many people found it very moving. I'm not one of them. There is more life in the woman begging to let her go.

Hilde Van Mieghem's film too faithfully matches the visual to the verbal; the euthanasia of every book adaptation. The script turns Lanoye's alter ego into an attention seeker. A dozen characters are reduced to dead letters because the actors do nothing but change their facial expressions or play simpletons. Viviane De Muynck has thrown herself with total contempt into the role of the mute mother. Fortunately she proved her talent as an actress long ago.

> Sprakeloos. BE, 2017, dir.: Hilde Van Mieghem, act.: Viviane De Muynck, Stany Crets, Marie Vinck, 105 min.
> Kinepolis, UGC De Brouckère

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