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feather_ghyll) wrote2024-04-21 04:12 pm
feather_ghyll) wrote2024-04-21 04:12 pm
REVIEW: The Quiet Girl (2022)
The Quiet Girl
Original title: An Cailín Ciúin (2022) Rated: 12A
Written by: Claire Keegan, Colm Bairéad
Directed by: Colm Bairéad
Starring: Catherine Clinch, Andrew Bennett, Carrie Crowley
This is a rich, character-driven film that was quite recently up for a Best Foreign Language Oscar, as it’s mainly in Irish Gaelic, although the quiet girl in question is quiet in both her mother tongue and in English, which her father (a non-Irish-speaking Irishman we’d call him in Welsh) only speaks. Set in rural Ireland in the 1980s, there were some things that were familiar to me, but a lot of things that were different, and the influence of Catholicism most of all. It reminded me a little of ‘Petite Maman’ in its focus on a young girl and how she understands the world, although it doesn’t have its paranormal dimension.
Cáit is one of many children, her mother, pregnant again, seems listless, her father feckless. Cáit is problematicin that her instinct is to bolt and hide, to be quiet, when life gets too much. Her parents send her to stay with relatives in another part of the country, at least until the newest baby comes.
The Cinnsealachs (I spelled it Kinsellas, which is, of course, an Anglicisation) have a larger, better kept farm, are older, but there are no children. Cáit receives more focused and caring attention from Eibhlín (pronounced Eileen) than she’s had in her life. Eibhlín’s husband Seán is more, well, laconic, and keeps his distance from Cáit at first, but than soon breaks down, and Cáit is soon belping both with their daily work, getting fed and guided. Like Cáit, we’ve started to wonder about the bedroom she’s sleeping in and whose clothes she’s wearing after her father drove off with her suitcase in the car. Eibhlín promised too much when she said, ‘There are no secrets in this house’ and ‘If you were mine, I wouldn’t leave you in a house of strangers’. After a gossipy neighbour reveals a tragic secret, Seán has to step up and explain the truth more kindly to the child in their care.
The Cinnsealachs’ kindness has allowed Cáit to flourish, as has their acceptance that she isn’t garrulous – much like Sean isn’t. Over the course of the film, she transforms from a slightly unkempt schoolgirl, to wearing boys clothes and working boots, to a girl whose long neat hair is kept back with a head band, a girl who is known as much for her long legs and for being fleet of foot as her quiet oddness. And then the baby brother is born and the undefined length of the stay comes to a heartbreaking end. Cáit doesn’t want to go, the Cinnsealachs don’t want to return her, but her mother wants her back, and so she returns, where she is badgered with questions, battered with noise and able to see home in a new light.
It's just a lovely film, showing a side of Ireland that we outsiders don’t see or hear. The English language is only used when characters are talking to Cait’s father or on the radio and TV (sometimes in Irish accents, sometimes in RP). Cáit’s mother made me think of all the other Irish mothers who had child after child (while, it’s hinted, the husband strayed) and had to look after them all. Maire who comes from Wexford, it is suggested, who knows full well there’s a better way to live – one where you get the hay in, where you don’t gamble away stock, where you help your neighbours. Cáit’s unhappiness at school and at her family home, in a crowd of loud, boisterous children reminded me that not coping at school is not a modern malaise.
The acting, including by the child actress, is very naturalistic. I believe it was adapted from a book, but it’s very much a motion picture, with body language speaking in silence.
Throughout it all there are rapturous glimpses of the beauty of nature, a ‘lôn goed’ – or lane surrounded by trees, covered by a canopy of beautiful green leaves. (A minor nitpick, but it didn’t look as if the countryside was going through a mini drought.) There’s a nearby well that the Cinnsealachs use, where the filmmaker conjures up a glorious shot where the tree canopy is reflected in a ladle dipped into its clear, deep water. Perhaps more important thematically are the lights that Cáit and Seán see together at sea one night. I got a little teary by the end.
(Watched on DVD.)
Original title: An Cailín Ciúin (2022) Rated: 12A
Written by: Claire Keegan, Colm Bairéad
Directed by: Colm Bairéad
Starring: Catherine Clinch, Andrew Bennett, Carrie Crowley
This is a rich, character-driven film that was quite recently up for a Best Foreign Language Oscar, as it’s mainly in Irish Gaelic, although the quiet girl in question is quiet in both her mother tongue and in English, which her father (a non-Irish-speaking Irishman we’d call him in Welsh) only speaks. Set in rural Ireland in the 1980s, there were some things that were familiar to me, but a lot of things that were different, and the influence of Catholicism most of all. It reminded me a little of ‘Petite Maman’ in its focus on a young girl and how she understands the world, although it doesn’t have its paranormal dimension.
Cáit is one of many children, her mother, pregnant again, seems listless, her father feckless. Cáit is problematicin that her instinct is to bolt and hide, to be quiet, when life gets too much. Her parents send her to stay with relatives in another part of the country, at least until the newest baby comes.
The Cinnsealachs (I spelled it Kinsellas, which is, of course, an Anglicisation) have a larger, better kept farm, are older, but there are no children. Cáit receives more focused and caring attention from Eibhlín (pronounced Eileen) than she’s had in her life. Eibhlín’s husband Seán is more, well, laconic, and keeps his distance from Cáit at first, but than soon breaks down, and Cáit is soon belping both with their daily work, getting fed and guided. Like Cáit, we’ve started to wonder about the bedroom she’s sleeping in and whose clothes she’s wearing after her father drove off with her suitcase in the car. Eibhlín promised too much when she said, ‘There are no secrets in this house’ and ‘If you were mine, I wouldn’t leave you in a house of strangers’. After a gossipy neighbour reveals a tragic secret, Seán has to step up and explain the truth more kindly to the child in their care.
The Cinnsealachs’ kindness has allowed Cáit to flourish, as has their acceptance that she isn’t garrulous – much like Sean isn’t. Over the course of the film, she transforms from a slightly unkempt schoolgirl, to wearing boys clothes and working boots, to a girl whose long neat hair is kept back with a head band, a girl who is known as much for her long legs and for being fleet of foot as her quiet oddness. And then the baby brother is born and the undefined length of the stay comes to a heartbreaking end. Cáit doesn’t want to go, the Cinnsealachs don’t want to return her, but her mother wants her back, and so she returns, where she is badgered with questions, battered with noise and able to see home in a new light.
It's just a lovely film, showing a side of Ireland that we outsiders don’t see or hear. The English language is only used when characters are talking to Cait’s father or on the radio and TV (sometimes in Irish accents, sometimes in RP). Cáit’s mother made me think of all the other Irish mothers who had child after child (while, it’s hinted, the husband strayed) and had to look after them all. Maire who comes from Wexford, it is suggested, who knows full well there’s a better way to live – one where you get the hay in, where you don’t gamble away stock, where you help your neighbours. Cáit’s unhappiness at school and at her family home, in a crowd of loud, boisterous children reminded me that not coping at school is not a modern malaise.
The acting, including by the child actress, is very naturalistic. I believe it was adapted from a book, but it’s very much a motion picture, with body language speaking in silence.
Throughout it all there are rapturous glimpses of the beauty of nature, a ‘lôn goed’ – or lane surrounded by trees, covered by a canopy of beautiful green leaves. (A minor nitpick, but it didn’t look as if the countryside was going through a mini drought.) There’s a nearby well that the Cinnsealachs use, where the filmmaker conjures up a glorious shot where the tree canopy is reflected in a ladle dipped into its clear, deep water. Perhaps more important thematically are the lights that Cáit and Seán see together at sea one night. I got a little teary by the end.
(Watched on DVD.)