Silent Friend

On Body and Soul director Ildikó Enyedi returns with a powerful, mesmerizing film that seems to pierce right through the cinema screen.

Silent Friend unfolds in the university town of Marburg across three eras and visual styles: 1908, in black-and-white 35mm, about the university’s first female student; 1972, in saturated 16mm, about two students and their playful houseplant experiment; and 2020, in digital clarity, about a lonely visiting researcher in neurology. The stories are connected by a majestic ginkgo tree that watches generations pass, and by the characters’ shared fascination with plants and their inner lives. In the closing credits, Tony Leung and Léa Seydoux share the screen with the Latin names of every plant featured in the film. Cinematic, eccentric, and at times delightfully surreal.

• Pia Lundberg