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View ProfilesPublished February 15, 2023 at 10:00 a.m.
The slate of nominees for Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards offers some glaring omissions, but it's hard to fault the presence of The Quiet Girl on the list. This quiet but mighty drama from director Colm Bairéad, adapted from Claire Keegan's 2010 novella Foster, has already won numerous honors and is the top-grossing Irish-language film ever.
The Quiet Girl will screen at the Vermont International Film Foundation's Global Roots Film Festival (see "A World of Cinema" ) on Saturday, February 18, 2:30 p.m., at Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center's Film House in Burlington. After that, look for it in theaters or streaming.
Nine-year-old Cáit (Catherine Clinch) is one of several daughters on a struggling Irish farmstead. At home, she cowers in the shadow of her louder older sisters, who mock her for wetting the bed. At school, she avoids other children and struggles to read.
Overwhelmed by the burden of a new baby and another pregnancy, Cáit's mother (Kate Nic Chonaonaigh) sends the girl to spend the summer at the home of her childless cousin Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley), who runs a dairy farm with her husband, Seán (Andrew Bennett). While Eibhlín welcomes Cáit without reserve, giving her the sort of steady attention and acceptance she lacks at home, the taciturn Seán initially treats her with gruff indifference. As he and Cáit come to trust and care about each other, we discover that even this seemingly peaceful household is riven by currents of tension and grief.
Perhaps no story line pulls at our heartstrings more reliably than that of the abandoned and unwanted child, whether it's the plucky orphan heroine of Anne of Green Gables, Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, or the abused and despised young Jane Eyre. We root for these kids to win over their adult caretakers and put the lie to everyone who underestimated them.
So many sentimental clichés have accreted around this type of story that it's difficult to describe The Quiet Girl, a film that eschews sentimentality and cliché, without creating false impressions. Yes, Seán is crusty and grumpy and needs to be won over, and Cáit eventually succeeds in that. But she's no ray of sunshine, and she gains his affection not with precocious wit or charm but by grabbing a broom and working in the barn beside him — in utter silence.
While Bennett and Crowley give excellent performances, the movie wouldn't work if young Clinch weren't so painfully credible in her first professional role. Cáit displays all the body language of someone for whom shyness is an unbearable weight. When she eventually begins to speak more freely — even, fleetingly, to smile — we feel as if that weight has been lifted from our shoulders, too.
The screenplay doesn't pathologize shyness or attribute it to a specific trauma. We see just enough of Cáit's home life — her father consorting with another woman, while her mother buckles under the weight of a chaotic household — to get a sense of why she needs the calm, healing routine that Eibhlín and Seán provide. Cáit doesn't blossom into a prodigy in their care, and she doesn't need to. For the audience, seeing her happy and comfortable is already miraculous.
This isn't just a film about a quiet girl but a film that explores the power of quietness, the layers of unspoken meaning hidden in the mundane moments of our lives. Bairéad and cinematographer Kate McCullough use techniques reminiscent of Terrence Malick's to evoke a child's view of the world. Trees are a persistent motif, whether they're seen from Cáit's angle as she gazes from the window of a moving car or form a backdrop to scenes inside the farmhouse, a sort of wind-blown wallpaper.
When hazy sunlight catches in the branches, the effect isn't idyllic so much as nostalgic. We know these are the moments that an older Cáit will remember, even as she also remembers that certain aspects of her summer with the couple were sad and jarring, too.
The Quiet Girl unfolds like a fine short story in the literary vein — I was reminded of Alice Munro's work — and it ends the same way, offering us emotional catharsis with no reassurance that Cáit's problems have been solved. To some viewers, that open-endedness may be frustrating, combined as it is with the relative uneventfulness of the plot. But, days after seeing the movie, I found myself still worrying about Cáit as if she were real. That's a testimony to the power of this quiet girl.
Petite Maman (2021; Hulu, Kanopy, rentable): French director Céline Sciamma also has a knack for exploring the inner worlds of children. In this quiet yet deeply affecting film, an 8-year-old grieving her grandmother finds solace from an unexpected source.
The Florida Project (2017; Kanopy, Paramount+, Showtime, rentable): While the 6-year-old heroine of Sean Baker's drama is far from quiet, his film sensitively depicts kids showing their resilience in an inhospitable environment — in this case, a seedy motel near Disney World.
The Wonder (2022; Netflix): Another recent movie set in a far from idealized Ireland is Sebastián Lelio's period piece about a nurse called in to verify the claims of a fasting child who insists that God alone can nourish her. Florence Pugh and young Kíla Lord Cassidy are equally compelling as the protagonists of this battle of wills.
Tags: Movie+TV Reviews, The Quiet Girl, Colm Bairéad, Claire Keegan, Foster, Catherine Clinch, Kate Nic Chonaonaigh, Carrie Crowley, Andrew Bennett, Staff Picks, Video
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