A tragic tale of a woman overwhelmed with the agony and misery of misophonia, White Noise packs one hell of a punch. Tamara Scherbak has brought us a superb short film.
Ava’s debilitating hypersensitivity to sound is becoming unliveable. Her doctor’s prescription of exposure therapy backfires as she descends into a fit of panic in both her class and the subway. When her attempt at suicide fails, she pleads with her doctor to enrol her in an experimental trial involving an anechoic chamber: the world’s quietest room. The doctor has his reservations, but Ava is convinced this is the ticket to her salvation. In this soundless space, her euphoria quickly mutates into madness when she hears her own body’s inner workings.
Knowing someone who struggles with the general noise that the world emits daily, to the point that they allow their earwax to build up in their ears to dull out the noise, I could relate heavily with Bahia Watson’s tragic Ava. From the outside looking in, it is a terrible thing to watch, so seeing a version that brings pain to the person is all the more difficult to stomach.
At one point, Ava asks her doctor if he even believes her about the level of pain she is in, and that strikes you to the bone in White Noise. As Ava’s issue is internal, it cannot be seen, so doctors and others in the medical field could easily swat her issues away as her exaggerating the symptom. It isn’t until after that meeting that Ava takes drastic action, forcing her doctor to find research suddenly. Tamara Scherbak clearly wants us to see that although a condition is not clear to see, it doesn’t mean it does not exist. It should not take such action for Ava to get some form of treatment other than exposure therapy.
Bahia Watson smashes it as the afflicted Ava; she gets the fear, frustrations, and general sense of overwhelming nature of her character that really rings true. When you see how defeated she is, you relate to it, even if you do not have hearing issues. You are genuinely affected by what she is going through; that pain really comes out in her performance and is heartbreaking.
The pièce de resistance though is Sylvain Bellemare’s sound design. Like films such as Sound of Violence before it, if the sounds aren’t quite right, the film will fail. Here, White Noise soars. We are right there with Ava in that sound chamber when everything hits the fan or when she is overwhelmed with the pain of what she is hearing around her. At times relentless, this immersive experience we are presented with tips us right to the edge and leaves us hanging there until the silence comes silently crashing down on us.
By bringing us into Ava’s story so late in White Noise, we are not given any time to settle; we see her struggles and desperation for recognition from the start. So, while her spiral may initially seem dramatic, it has undoubtedly been long coming for the poor soul. Scherbak and co-writer Christina Saliba have given us just enough all around without having their audience want to see what is next—a perfect little capsule of a moment in an anguished woman’s life.
★★★★★
The Fantasia International Film Festival takes place in Montreal from July 20th through August 9th.
For more of our coverage of Fantasia 2023, please see below:
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