The Quiet Girl is one of the most beautiful movies I’ve ever seen. It is perfection. It is impossibly small, and emotionally immense. This is the sort of film that creeps up on you slowly, in ways that you don’t realize are happening, until you are so utterly overcome with emotion that you don’t quite know how to digest it. It’s the sort of film that you sit through the entire end credits of, not because you are wondering which Marvel character will make a surprise appearance after them, or to be polite to the artists and craftspeople who made it (both of which are, of course, completely valid reasons), but because you simply cannot move, you’re that overwhelmed.
Honestly, it’s been a long time since I felt like it was disrespectful to the cinema audience that when the lights come up, you are expected to leave. I could have just sat alone in the dark for a while longer with the feeling this beyond-lovely movie left me with.
That feeling is the most bittersweet of pathos that the coming-of-age genre offers: the one that is all about a child learning that the way the world is for you is not necessarily the way it is for everyone else. And that the way it is for you could be better than it is. It is about the smashing of childhood innocence… or, perhaps more accurately, of childhood ignorance. Because sometimes a child’s innocence of the wider world is a good thing to destroy.
So: I’ve heard it said — a screenwriter’s tip — that a movie should be about the most important thing that will ever happen in the protagonist’s life. And it might seem at first that that will not be true for nine-year-old Cait (Catherine Clinch), who in the rural Irish summer of 1981 is sent by her parents to live with relatives she does not know. How earthshattering could that be?
For Cait, it is. Life at home is chaotic and messy. Her mother (Kate Nic Chonaonaigh: Shadow Dancer) is overwhelmed, with too many kids and another on the way, arriving soon; her father (Michael Patric: Warcraft, Becoming Jane) is a boorish drunk, remote and distant. Sensitive Cait is the slightly oddball youngest child among a gaggle of much more confident, tougher older siblings. (We may presume, however, that they will have their own lingering traumas from this home life.) So off Cait goes, to, at a bare minimum, give her mother a bit of a break in the last months of Mom’s pregnancy. Sending Cait away is definitely about what is best for everyone else, not about what is best for Cait.
And yet…
The entirety of this film, based on the renowned 2010 story “Foster” by Claire Keegan and mostly in Irish Gaelic, is wholly from Cait’s perspective. Writer-director Colm Bairéad, with his narrative feature debut, utilizes a square-ish aspect ratio, constrained like Cait’s own view itself is. This is a story in which we, the adult viewer, have more knowledge than its young central character: we see nuances she cannot. So our hearts break for Cait when she discovers that life at the home of her mother’s cousin, Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley: Extra Ordinary), and Eibhlín’s farmer husband, Seán (Andrew Bennett: Angela’s Ashes), is calm. Quiet. There are no other children in the house. And Cait is, at first, somewhat mystified to suddenly receive the tender care any child deserves, and that, we instinctively understand, she has never experienced before. The gentleness, the sweet humanity with which Bairéad depicts such simple everyday things as Eibhlín brushing Cait’s hair or tucking her into bed is so poignant that we know it’s the first time Cait has been treated with such kindness.
To be clear: Cait’s parents are not abusive. They are not cruel. If they are neglectful, it is of an ordinary stripe, a benign distraction that is, alas, all too common. But that’s a low bar… and Cait’s discovery of the fact that life can be better than the bare minimum she has experienced before is the most-important-moment-of-her-life thing in this extraordinary movie.
There is more going on here: Eibhlín and Seán are, of course, more complex than Cait can appreciate at first, and the slow unfolding of their mysteries through Cait’s eyes becomes the dawning awareness of a child’s recognition of the richness of adult life. So that’s another awakening for Cait: that not only can her life be more, but that other people’s lives are already more. For a perceptive, sympathetic child like Cait, this is shattering.
I love this movie so much. I love that this is a movie you sit with. I love its slowness, and its quiet compassion. Many movies are very fast and loud now, but even among those that are not, The Quiet Girl is uniquely contemplative; few are as considered, as unassumingly pensive as this one. It is a treasure, and a gift.
more films like this:
• Brooklyn [Prime US | Prime UK | Apple TV US | Apple TV UK]
• Eighth Grade [Prime US | Prime UK | Apple TV]
So delighted that you love this film as much as I do. It seems that whoever has seen it cannot be unaffected by its quiet power. I’ve watched it twice and it’s still with me.
Even though I had read Carrie Keegan’s short story “Foster” upon which the film is based before seeing the movie, I was still surprised by how much “The Quiet Girl” affected me. I let a week or so go by and then went to see the film again and the result was the same—sitting all misty-eyed with a lump in my throat at the final credits rolled. I can’t recall a film that has lingered in my mind so much, and I sometimes have to pause in the midst of my reveries about it to remind myself, “Hey, Tom, it’s only a movie.” Maybe there’s a support group somewhere.
I agree with MaryAnn’s opinion in her review that Cáit is a neglected child, but not an abused one. I’ve come across a few critics who describe Cáit as the victim of physical abuse or even sexual molestation by her father, but there is evidence in the film to dispute that position. The idea that the story would end with Seán and Eibhlin unwittingly returning Cáit to a home where she’d be further abused simply runs contrary to the whole spirit and tone of the film. As a retiree who spent forty years working in the field of child protection and young offenders, the family dynamics in Cáit’s home ring true to me. Dan is a feckless and irresponsible husband and father, but he’s not a sinister character. And Ma is doing her best to manage the home and family—including Cáit’s bedwetting—with the minimal resources she has.
Each time I saw “The Quiet Girl” I went home after the film, made myself a big mug of tea, sat and put my feet up, looked out the window, thought about my own son and two daughters now fully grown, and thanked God I was always much more of a Seán than a Dan when my kids were growing up.
Thank you for recommending this. Just seen it—absolutely wonderful.
Also, I found it noteworthy that of all the characters, Dan, the father, is the only one who speaks (and is spoken to) exclusively in English. Gaelic in the film seems to be the intimate language of home and family, while English is the language of the public square (schools, shops, TV). Imperialism at work, I’m sure. But Dan only speaks English to his family; his wife talks to their daughters in Gaelic, but switches to English for Dan. To me, this marks him as distant from the rest of his family, but I wonder if there’s something more going on, culturally or politically, that I’m missing. Does he not understand Gaelic, or is he just choosing not to speak it?
I think it’s just Dan’s way of being difficult, to refuse to speak Irish to the rest of his family but insist that they speak English to him. Given the amount of time Dan seems to spend away from home acting like he’s still single, it may also be his way of denying that he’s a father and husband with adult responsibilities.
Mary doesn’t seem to be intimidated by him. You can see that the night she insists he put down his racing form and pay attention so they can decide how long Cait should stay at the Kinsellas. Mary also seems to control the money in the home, given we hear Cait say that “Mam” doesn’t have the money to pay someone to come and take in their crop of hay. We also hear Cait describe how Mam didn’t speak to Dan for a month after he lost their red heifer, which doesn’t sound like something you’d be able to do if you were married to a controlling or abusive husband. Also, at the end of the film when Dan starts to disparage Mary’s ability to look after their children, she cuts him off with a “Dan!”, and he shuts up. So I think it’s just Dan’s way of trying to carve out some bit of independence for himself in a home where his wife calls the shots.
I may very well be wrong on this, but my impression is that Irish is taught to Irish school children because it’s Ireland’s official language, the same way that French is taught to Canadian students because it’s one of Canada’s two official languages. But most Irish people don’t keep up their fluency in Irish after leaving school, the same way many Anglophone Canadian children don’t maintain their French after graduation. One of the positive side effects of “An Cailin Ciuin” is that it has revitalized interest in expanding use of Irish in everyday life in Ireland, or so I gather from various news reports.
“… lost their red heifer as a result of a foolish wager …”
Over a year-and-a-half after I first viewed it at The Screening Room, my local independent cinema, “The Quiet Girl” remains my favourite film of the past several years, the one I think about every day.