Movie Review: The Quiet Girl

4.5 stars out of 5

First and foremost, this is not A Quiet Place III. Though it is a pretty quiet movie. The Quiet Girl, from Ireland, was one of the 2023 Oscar nominees for Best International Feature Film. It didn’t win, but it is terrific.

I’m not sure when the movie is set — late 70s? early 80s? — though I narrowed down the timeframe faster than I did for Women Talking. What we have here is a quiet girl, Cáit (pronounced “Cort”), living in rural Ireland with a white-trash family, or whatever the Irish equivalent of white trash is. Dad drinks a lot, mom is preggers again, money’s too tight to mention, and Cáit is prone to wandering off and hiding. Till the new baby arrives, they send Cáit off to live with an older couple, mom’s cousin, a few hours away.

What transpires is a sweet, slowly unfolding story about gaining and earning trust, not accepting your prescribed fate, carrying on after troubles… and that family is where you find it.

Young Catherine Clinch as Cáit has never been in anything before and she is marvelous. Again, she’s quiet, but gives little glances, small motions; she’s holding so much inside. In this life of ours there are loud, running-around, confident kids but if you were among the rest of us, you will connect with Cáit on a soulful level.

Carrie Crowley as foster mom Eibhlín oozes compassion and patience tempered by some underlying fatigue and sadness. Andrew Bennett is the foster dad (jimminy, he was the narrator in Angela’s Ashes; small country!) and you might say he’s The Quiet Farmer but he has an internal life too and a code to live by, and, well, just give him time. Michael Patric as her real da is sufficient though I kept wondering what Colin Farrell would’ve done with the role. Likely it would’ve been distracting.

Cheers to writer/director Colm Bairéad, only his second feature and nearly each piece perfectly placed. (Script is adapted from the novella Foster by Claire Keegan; will have to check out her work.)

Note to viewers (and I hope you will, soon): The movie is subtitled as they’re mostly speaking Gaelic. Interestingly, characters will switch off into English and then switch back; I didn’t know if that was less formal or what. But, interesting.

The film’s emotional intensity really snuck up on me, and as the end credits rolled I found myself weeping. Quietly.