SDIFF 2025 : Silent Rebellion Ask her husband

Set in neutral Switzerland in 1943, the story of teenage servant girl Emma and her private struggles inside her restrictive Protestant community.

Despite the beautiful, wide sweeping shots of the Swiss mountains and flowering fields, the entire film feels very stifled and boxed in. Which of course echoes and expounds on the repressed feelings Emma (Lila Gueneau) endures on a daily basis, the rage and the sorrow and the utter shame, none of which is considered proper for a young woman, much less a servant girl with no standing whatsoever. Up against the backdrop of the ongoing war with Germany and the Swiss struggle to remain actually neutral, repression and eventual rebellion are the recurring themes of this French-language drama. Make sure your embroidery is all ready for sale, and let’s stride into this.

We begin right away with Emma being before the committee for considering her village’s virtue award, answering pointed personal questions like she was before a prison board rather than a committee for giving an award. Emma’s mother was cast out for infidelity. How could Emma answer with anything other than disdain when asked about her? In her regular life, Emma works as a servant for the local Pastor Robert (Gregoire Colin), but she also makes no secret of her desire to become a nurse, and looks on with envy as the Pastor’s daughter Colette (Sasha Gravat) studies diligently at the kitchen table for school. Life is benign, beige, and boring, and maybe mildly hopeful with the village virtue prize in sight, and upended completely when brash young journalist Louis (Cyril Metzger) visits the pastor’s family.

Though Emma was entranced by Louis and his charms, her assault in a field of flowers by the young journalist can’t be characterized as anything other than a rape. In keeping with the title of the film, though the words “NO” and “STOP” never left her lips, the ordeal clearly isn’t something Emma ever wanted. And the aftermath, where it turns out that, of course, Emma is now in a family way from that wretched encounter, is even worse.

Her sad father and two younger sisters, who eke out an existence via embroidery, tailoring, and little else but piety, can’t help Emma. Her mother, who ironically only sees her 3 beloved daughters during church attendance, is still somehow concerned with appearances, and thinks the best way to help Emma is to get her married to a doting acquaintance, the border guard Paul (Thomas Doret), as soon as possible. Even when Emma takes it upon herself to try and perform her own abortion (quite serious trigger warnings, be aware), and the doctor from the award committee is called in to save her, instead of sympathy, he chides Emma for her selfishness and offers nothing in the way of real, lasting aid. Emma’s world is a man’s world, and when she wins the virtue award after marrying Paul and her cash prize is handed to her

husband instead, the realization of trading one imprisoned existence for another comes crashing down.

Despite apparently being told the whole truth, Paul is a kind-hearted soul who adopts Emma’s son as his own, and it does appear as though he loves Emma in a good, homely way. But his home farm is full of drab chores, the life of a screaming infant, and eternal servitude to her husband and his equally humdrum relatives, all of whom seem to be men. Does Emma have the courage to, with the help of her somewhat understanding mother, break out on her own and make a life on her own terms?

In the end, after being underestimated her whole life and the litany of wrongs done to her, Emma has claimed her own happiness with her own two hands and fine mind. Amid her mother’s people and the skirl of cheerful music, Emma finally sports a bright yellow dress and a beautiful, willing smile, dancing as she always has to the strains of her own music, her own rebellion, silent or not.