Irish film ‘The Quiet Girl’ is eloquent in its silence

BY MICHAEL O’SULLIVAN The Washington Post

In a world of noise, the Academy Award-nominated “The Quiet Girl” stands out. Pitted against such other soft-spoken gems as “Close” and “Eo” in the relatively hushed and meditative corner-category of best foreign language film, this lovely Irish drama, featuring a bit of English but mostly told in the lilting Irish tongue, won’t overwhelm you with subtitles, for no other reason than its most powerful moments are unspoken.

One of those moments occurs not long after the title character, a young girl named Cait (Catherine Clinch, making an astonishingly assured debut), has been shipped off to stay with relatives by her parents: Da, a surly, boozing philanderer (Michael Patric), and his pregnant, put-upon wife (Kate Nic Chonaonaigh), Mam, neither of whom is ever identified by a name. Cait’s older sisters will stay with this dysfunctional dynamic while Mam prepares to deliver her latest child. Presumably, Mam and Da want Cait, known as the Wanderer, out of their hair.

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Dropped off at the farm of Mam’s cousin Eibhlin Cinnsealach (pronounced like Evelyn Kinsella and played by Carrie Crowley) and her husband, Sean (Andrew Bennett), an older, childless couple who are still grieving a loss, Cait soon lets it be known where she gets her nickname, meandering out of Sean’s sight one day while helping him with his chores. When he scolds her in alarm — out of not anger but buried pain — it tells us so much about what might have happened to this couple, without articulating precisely what the trauma is, at least not just yet. And when Sean apologizes to Cait the next day, not in words, but by silently placing a cookie next to her breakfast plate and then hurrying out of the kitchen, mute with inarticulate emotion, “The Quiet Girl” is at its most eloquent. Cait may not understand what just happened, but we do.

Directed by Colm Bairead, and based on the short story “Foster” by Claire Keegan, this is a tale in which, by the standards of Hollywood, at least, not terribly much happens. Yet in her short sojourn with the Cinnsealachs, Cait discovers a way of life — a way of loving and of being loved unconditionally — that is utterly foreign to her. And in this quiet girl, her foster parents find something, too: a kind of healing.

For viewers, the film also might have a wholesome effect; it’s a tonic to the chaos and jumble of “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “Elvis,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and their ilk.

Much of this magic transpires in the silences, which Bairead fills with shots of sunlit green grass and telling glances. “The Quiet Girl” is that rare thing: a work of storytelling that speaks most loudly when it is saying nothing.

Rated PG-13. At theaters. Contains some strong language, smoking and mature thematic material. In Irish and some English with subtitles. 94 minutes.

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