The Quiet Girl: Heartbreakingly Beautiful

 

 

The Quiet Girl (2022/23)

Directed by Colm Bairéad

Break Out Pictures, 95 minutes, PG-13, In Irish and English

★★★★★

 

The Quiet Girl is one of the most beautiful and moving films you’ll ever see in which almost nothing happens. Director Colm Bairéad has given us a tone poem to the lonely childhood of a nine-year-old girl who doesn’t fit in and carries her sorrows silently.

 

The year is 1981 and young Cáit (Catherine Clinch) lives in a failing rural farmstead that’s dreary in ways that only Irish poverty can be. Her parents–referenced as merely Da and Mam–are completely inadequate; he because he drinks too much, womanizes, smokes like a dirty factory, and gambles. For her part, Mam is perpetually pregnant, haggard, passive, and so disengaged that she frequently fails to pack Cáit’s lunch. That “lunch” is often little more than bread that might or might not have some jam smeared upon it. Poor Cáit is so hungry that she resorts to trying to steal some of a classmate’s milk. Not that she has any “mates” as such. The other children poke fun at her poor reading skills, ostracize her, and whisper that she’s “slow,” a synonym for mentally challenged. For all of that, Cáit is an undeniably beautiful red-haired child with a cherubic face.

 

Cáit’s life takes an upturn when she is literally farmed out for the summer to a distant cousin in County Meath. Her Da drives off without even remembering to take her suitcase from the car boot. Eibhlín Kinsella (Carrie Crowley) takes an immediate shine to Cáit, though her husband Séan (Andrew Bennett) is as silent as Cáit and seemingly uninterested in interacting with their visitor. Cáit nonetheless experiences things she never has before: a doting caregiver, a warm bath, full dinner plates, jars of jam, a stocked freezer, a tidy home, and a prosperous farm. She has only the filthy dress on her back, but improvised clothing is found for her. Séan puts his foot down and insists that Eibhlín take Cáit to town to buy her proper clothing, ostensibly because he says she can’t go to mass dressed in jeans, boots, and boy’s clothing, but we know that he is beginning to be fond of her. When Cáit tries on a new dress, we see her glow within. She has hitherto been nearly wordless, but she comes to life when Séan tells her to see how fast she can lope down the long lane to fetch the mail and run back. Her face lights up with joy each times she does so as her growing legs churn up and down the drive and he times her progress. Eibhlín helps her with reading.

 

Under the loving care of Eibhlín and, increasingly, from Séan, Cáit begins to thrive. She even holds Séan’s hand and helps him muck out the barns and milk the cows. A nosy, nasty neighbor is about the only downside of Cáit’s summer. She spills the beans about an unspoken sadness in the Kinsella household, but viewers will figure it out long before the revelation is verbalized. The true sadness comes at summer’s end when it’s time to return home for the beginning of school. All three put on a game face, but we witness three broken hearts as Séan and Eibhlín drive away. The ending alone is simply priceless.

 

On the surface, The Quiet Girl is a straight-forward tale of how Cáit found her voice. On a deeper level it is so much more, including a lesson in sadness, love, and inner strength. The Quiet Girl is based on the Claire Keegan novella Foster, though changes were made for the movie. Its Irish box office was the highest ever in the Republic, which made it modest by U.S. standards, but Ireland’s population is just five million. It was also the first Irish language film ever nominated for a Best International Film Oscar. It lost to All Quiet on the Western Front, a fabulous production but one that cost nearly 20 times the budget of The Quiet Girl. Pick your denomination, but Euro for dollar* it’s a treasure to behold. 

 

Rob Weir

 

*In 2022, the Irish pound (often called the punt) was retired in the Republic of Ireland in favor of the Euro.