‘The Quiet Girl’ Review: Irish Oscar Submission Is an Affecting Coming-of-Age Drama About the Nourishment of Kindness

Few films explore both the shelter and the solitude of silence with the eloquence of Colm Bairéad’s gently captivating Irish-language drama The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin). While the neglected 9-year-old protagonist of the title disappears into the cracks of her overcrowded family household and is dismissed as a slow learner at school, her perceptive intelligence flowers over a warming summer in the care of distant relatives. As the almost equally taciturn man who becomes a much-needed father figure to her notes in the introverted girl’s defense: “She says as much as she has to say.”

Comments like that one, colored by a kindness largely unspoken, infuse this expertly crafted film with stirring grace and sensitivity. Adapted by Bairéad — whose background is in television and documentaries — from Claire Keegan’s short story, Foster, this is a work of unfailing restraint, which makes its stealth emotional heft all the more remarkable.

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A prize-winner early this year in the Berlin Film Festival’s Generation sidebar for young audiences, the modest production swept the Irish Film & Television Academy Awards (beating out Belfast) and was a surprise domestic hit, becoming the highest-grossing Irish-language film of all time. Neon’s boutique label Super recently acquired North American rights and should benefit from the film’s positioning as Ireland’s submission in the international feature category of the 2023 Oscars.

From the very first images — framed by cinematographer Kate McCullough in gorgeously textured compositions in the snug 4.3 aspect ratio — it’s clear that willowy young Cáit (Catherine Clinch) is most comfortable when she’s alone. As one of her cluster of more outgoing siblings calls out her name, informing her that their mother is looking for her, Cáit hides in the long grass in her own dreamy headspace.

Her Mam (Kate Nic Chonaonaigh) is an impatient, harried woman, with too many kids to take care of and one more on the way; her Da (Michael Patric) is gruff, lazy and unsuited to farm work, lurking around the edges of these economical establishing scenes with a hint of menace.

Bairéad and talented newcomer Clinch deftly show how Cáit observes this rural world while remaining almost invisible within it, picking up snatches of the terse conversations between her parents or the rowdier exchanges of her sisters. At school we see how her almost inaudible squeak of a voice and painful shyness in a reading lesson prompt the teacher to move briskly on to the next student, while outside the classroom, her schoolmates either ignore her or look at her like a freak.

With minimal exposition, Cáit is sent off to spend the summer with her mother’s older, more financially comfortable cousin Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley) and her husband Seán (Andrew Bennett) at their small dairy farm. Her Da — barely capable of civil behavior let alone showing gratitude — is so eager to be rid of the girl he drives off with her suitcase in the back of the car. But Eibhlín immediately begins treating Cáit with a warm tenderness to which she is entirely unaccustomed, even if Seán initially remains distant.

True to its title, this is not a film of vocal epiphanies or major transformations. But in a nuanced performance that’s infinitely expressive with few words, Clinch conveys the nurturing effect on Cáit of this interlude of acceptance and belonging. As Eibhlín gives her a much-needed bath and in a soothing voice counts out 100 strokes while brushing her hair, there’s a sense of the girl nestling into this strange new idea of what a child’s life could — and should — be like, of learning to trust. She seems silently thankful when Eibhlín involves her in the housework and meal preparation.

Eibhlín tells her that theirs is a house without secrets, and that secrets imply shame: “We don’t want shame here.” But sorrow clearly hangs in the air.

The gradual softening of Seán to the girl’s presence in the house is as much an indication of that sorrow as his overreaction — angry and fearful — when she vanishes while left briefly in his care as he’s mucking out the cow stalls. And Cáit perhaps intuits the nature of the couple’s sadness as she gazes at the railway-themed wallpaper in her room or contemplates the boys’ clothing she’s given to wear until they take her to town at Seán’s insistence to buy her some new dresses.

Her enlightenment happens not in a heart to heart, but via a wonderful scene that injects a spark of meanness into the drama. At a wake for an elderly neighbor, Eibhlín agrees to let seemingly well-meaning villager Úna (Joan Sheehy) take Cáit home and mind the girl until she and Seán are ready to leave. But Úna is a nosy gossip, plying the girl with questions about Eibhlín (“Does she use butter or margarine in her pastry?”) and spitting out the personal tragedy that marked their lives without an ounce of sympathy. She can hardly wait until she gets in the door of her home to start trashing the refreshments at the wake (“There was some sort of attempt at a trifle”) to her sour-faced crone of a mother.

That break in the film’s serenity is brutal and bracing, laying the foundations for the inevitable end of the idyll when the school term approaches and Cáit faces her return home. Whether or not the time away changes her permanently is left ambiguous, but it certainly appears to amplify her understanding of the world and of the beauty of kindness. There’s no doubt it will remain a time to which she goes back in her mind for comfort, just as it likely will for Eibhlín and Seán. There’s every chance Cáit’s reticence will remain unchanged, maybe taking heart from something Seán tells her: “Many’s the person missed the opportunity to say nothing and lost much because of it.”

With Clinch as its achingly vulnerable center, the fine ensemble does unimpeachable work, all of them in sync with the film’s enveloping sense of place. The understated production and costume design by Emma Lowery and Louise Stanton, respectively, capture an early ’80s setting that could almost pass for the 1950s. (In one sweet moment when Cáit sees Eibhlín’s jumbo chest freezer for the first time, it’s as if she’s looking in awe at a miracle from the future.)

The Quiet Girl is an unassuming drama — hushed, intimate and melancholy — skirting the edges of sentimentality at times but invariably pulling back before it becomes a sugary cliché. That balance is maintained also in Stephen Rennicks’ lovely melodic score. This is an accomplished debut feature, its emotional rewards in inverse proportion to its scale.

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