Movie Review – The Quiet Girl

The Quiet Girl (2022)
Written and directed by Colm Bairéad

This one got me. I could feel the lump in my throat during the first moments. By the final scene, I was a sobbing mess. Why? The Quiet Girl is a film of tremendous emotional depth, a story about empathy & human connection. It’s also a meditation on how the circumstances of life are simply not fair. Children are born to bad people. Good people lose their children in tragedies. It doesn’t feel right, but it happens. The universe can be a cold place. Yet, humans are capable of bringing great warmth into it. On top of the story, it’s a story spoken in Irish, a language moviegoers don’t often hear, a delicate, lyrical way of speaking that adds to the tenderness of the picture.

Nine-year-old Cait (Catherine Clinch) feels neglected. She’s one of several siblings living in a crowded house with another baby on the way. She doesn’t speak much and often keeps her gaze on the floor. Her parents decide to send Cait to a middle-aged cousin, Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley), and her husband, Sean (Andrew Bennett), over the summer. The couple warms up to her fairly quickly. They don’t have girls’ clothes in the house, so Cait must wear boys’ clothes from a room where another child once lived. Eibhlín seems to come alive, taking care of her visitor, brushing her hair & teaching her about the farm. Sean is more hesitant but eventually comes around. The couple begins to realize that Cait’s bedwetting stems from abuse back home but is unsure how to deal with it. They also have a tragic secret, which Cait eventually learns by accident. The days are passing by, and summer will eventually end.

I was a primary school teacher in the States for fourteen years. Many children were a part of my classroom during that time. Most moved on, and I never was able to keep in touch. However, a small number remained connected with me. One of these students was a reticent girl herself. I taught her in 3rd & 4th grade, and when she went to middle school, I was off to a new school too. Years later, I came across her on Twitter. She was fifteen then. I told her that my wife and I thought about her often and hoped she was doing well. We arranged to get lunch with her mom’s permission, though I noted how unconcerned her mother was at the time. That was odd to me. 

We would visit this young woman at least once a month for the next few years. Lunch and a movie became a regular thing. In early 2020, she called my wife in distress. Conditions at home could have been better. A social worker had gotten involved and would place her and her brother in foster care unless there was a reliable adult she could stay with. We didn’t hesitate to open our home. It wasn’t an extended stay, just a little over a week. Eventually, we found other family members of hers and knew that, legally, they would be seen as the appropriate people for her to live with. We would have kept them both if we could have.

The night her family came over, I was just completely broken. I had never felt this sort of hurt. I’ve felt lots of hurt, but this was something new & different. This was something that touched a place I’d never hurt before. I wanted to care for these children, not as a teacher, but as a parent. But the reality of the situation was that it just couldn’t happen. While she did go to live with this other part of her family, we have kept in touch. She’s twenty years old, and after a rocky first year of post-high school life, she’s doing very well. She enjoys her job, has just bought a car, and lives with her boyfriend; his family is nearby & very supportive. She calls my wife “mom”. For me, she alternates between “dad” or my last name without the Mr attached from when I was her teacher.

The Quiet Girl made me feel that hurt again. When you see a child who is so perfect and learning about the world yet suffers at the hands of a neglectful adult, you can’t help but feel that ache. Children should be loved, cared for, and shown how to become a part of the world. Adults’ purpose is to make the world good for the young ones, and hope they improve on our follies. I also can’t help but think about the numerous videos I’ve seen over the last two months coming out of Gaza. I have seen children torn apart by war in every possible way. I’ve seen children screaming with heavy sobs for a mother who was crushed beneath a bomb. I’ve seen parents carrying what is left of their children. There’s a lot of false talk about harm to children being vomited up by Conservatives, yet they don’t seem to shed a tear over these things.

Catherine Clinch, the star of The Quiet Girl, delivers an incredible performance. It is her feature debut. Her performance’s restraint, emotion, and beauty are masterful. It’s no wonder she won the Irish equivalent of an Oscar for the picture. The cast is perfectly placed and gives equal performances supporting Catherine’s. 

This is Colm Bairéad’s directorial debut; he doesn’t miss a beat. This is one of the best-looking films of the year. The camera picks up every rich detail and colorful hue on the screen. The Quiet Girl is a picture full of greens and browns that feel alive. There’s also expert use of slow motion that adds some dramatic flourish to critical moments in the story. For a film that clocks a runtime of just around 90 minutes, it feels full of life, a story that never tries to be maudlin but evokes genuine pathos.

The ending will break you. I would be surprised if anyone could make it through the last scene and not weep. There’s much uncertainty about what happens next, but there is no doubt about what is felt. Love. The Quiet Girl is a picture about being vulnerable to love, moving past the pain of grief so that you can take something that had felt dead and bring it back to life. People are in tremendous pain these days, and it is easy to harden your heart and close yourself to the world. But what a horrible waste that would be. There are so many children in this world in dire need of love. It is wrong of us not to care for them.