Mark Reviews Movies: THE QUIET GIRL

The Quiet Girl, Super LTD

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 15, 2022

We teach more by example than by words, and children absorb those actions and their meaning like a sponge that's incapable of saturation. That's one of the main themes of The Quiet Girl, a small, delicate, and rather specific drama that, regardless, seems to possess entire worlds of insight, meaning, and emotions within the borders of its narrative. This is a lovely, heartbreaking film about loneliness and how simple acts of connection can at least start to break through the shells of despair, pain, and grief.

Writer/director Colm Bairéad tells a story so simple that it might seem impossible for its tale to reach such heights. Just as the events and acts within the story itself, though, the simple things often say more than any grand gesture or big speech ever could. Even though this is the filmmaker's narrative feature debut, Bairéad shows himself to possess a complete understanding of and a full command over that idea, as well as a means of storytelling that embraces the notion in its every frame.

That simple story, based on the Claire Keegan's short story "Foster," revolves around Cáit (a remarkable debut performance from Catherine Clinch), the last daughter in a family of maybe six children, with the most recent child and the baby-on-the-way being boys. As such, the girl has essentially been forgotten by her family.

Her mother (played by Kate Nic Chonaonaigh) is busy with household chores and preparing for the new baby, and her father (played by Michael Patric) is away at work or drinking and gambling. The girl's older sisters have their own ways together, and her younger brother is barely a toddler. That leaves 9-year-old Cáit, growing up outside a small Irish village during the early 1980s, to fend for herself in more ways than any child probably should.

Bairéad opens the film with a mysterious and increasingly haunting image, as the camera rise above a field of tall grass. Voices in the distance call out to our protagonist, but even as the camera settles into position, looking straight down on a particular spot on the ground, the subject of the shot is invisible. Is that a leg or an arm, lying crooked, unmoving, and dirty among the stalks? The silence and stillness of that thing, vaguely recognizable as something human, might have us thinking the worst has already happened to poor Cáit, and the suggestion, perhaps, is that it very well might, if her life continues as it does in our introduction to her.

The story eventually has the girl's parents sending her away from the family farm to live with the mother's cousin, as well as the cousin's husband, on their farm. The whole of the narrative amounts to a series of vignettes, and before things drastically for Cáit, we get the essence of what her life is like at home. She is ignored by her siblings, dismissed by a mother who seemingly just wants to know that the girl is still alive whenever she disappears or hides for long stretches of time, and treated just shy of cruelly by her father (Who knows what we don't see, either because the father hides it well or because the filmmaker spares us anything more than the suggestion?). At school, Cáit has trouble reading aloud and is called a "weirdo" more or less to her face by other students.

Cáit's trip to the relatives' farm comes with barely an announcement and not a single word of input from the girl. She will stay with Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley) and her husband Seán (Andrew Bennett) for an indeterminate time after the birth of her baby brother. Having kids isn't a problem, the girl's father tells his distant in-laws, but feeding them can become quite the trouble. This one, he calls her as if he wants the girl to know what a burden he believes her to be, will probably eat the cousins out of house and home by the time they're finished watching over her.

From there, the film announces a complete turnaround with the same subtle precision that it has detailed, documented, and made us feel how alone, unwanted, and rejected Cáit feels. It's the little things, such as Eibhlín finding clothes for the girl to wear (Her father didn't unload her suitcase), tucking her in at night, and making a non-judgmental joke when Cáit wets the bed.

Once again, this way of life is communicated through vignettes, gradually forming comfortable patterns and safe routines by Bairéad and editor John Murphy. The intercutting of these moments forms a cohesion—of trips to the well and preparing food in the kitchen and Eibhlín brushing the girl's hair. That consistency further displays and reflects the bond being formed between these two characters—of hands being held and a rhythm in the chopping of onions and the soft, careful counting of those strokes of the hairbrush. This is how we learn to love and know that we are loved. It's as simple and profound as that.

While that connection is more or less instantaneous, much of the story focuses on the trickier bond between Cáit and Seán, who at first seems hesitant to even speak to the girl. They gradually develop something of their own kind of communication—sweeping the floor together, putting a cookie on the table next to her, timing her as she runs down the lane to gather mail (Cinematographer Kate McCullough gives every natural locale, each nook and cranny of the home, and even the dirty parts of the farm some idyllic quality).

There's a real complexity to Seán's initially doubtful but increasingly grateful reaction to having Cáit in his home. Just as Crowley's performance exudes warmth and affection in its every moment, Bennett's work quietly communicates a man coming to terms with an old pain and this new possibility of happiness. The way, for example, he leans his head back in one shot, after Cáit lays her head on his shoulder while they finally watch TV together, speaks volumes of accepting both the past and the present.

There is a secret beneath all of this, despite Eibhlín's insistence that secrets cause shame and that there are no secrets in this house. While it's not a surprise (Bairéad doesn't try to hide it, but the portrayal of the day-to-day life and momentous changes for the characters are so engaging that we might not consider the possibility), it will remain one here. When it's actually revealed, we realize just how much these new relationships mean to every party involved.

Meanwhile, our appreciation for how much empathy Bairéad has extended to all three of these characters—through these routines, shifts in attitude and behavior, and small acts of kindness, compassion, and love—becomes overwhelming. The Quiet Girl itself becomes an overwhelmingly emotional experience of joy and devastation and, ultimately, the uncertainty of what will happen to the only certainty in the lives of these people—that they love each other.

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