The Quiet Girl (2022)

It’s not often that a movie can hit its highest sustained note right at the finish, but The Quiet Girl is one that can make the claim. It’s a coming-of-age story written and scripted by Irishman Colm Bairead about tweenager Cait (“introducing” Catherine Clinch), who is sent away for the summer while her mother has approximately Cait’s fourth sibling and the slouchy dad (Michael Patric) chews on toothpicks and tries to make ends meet without doing much. Cait has been sent to live with her mother’s people, a middle-aged couple who are second cousins to Cait, if I understand family trees. They are older, with no children, and something isn’t right about them. One thing The Quiet Girl does well, which I appreciated because I kept expecting it to veer off in that direction (too much horror and true-crime, doubtless)—one thing it does well is steer clear of explosive, unpleasant issues like sexual abuse. There is abuse here, in her family of origin and in the way many of these people live—the story plays a little like an episode from Chekhov’s “Peasants”—and there is grief and loss in the air and water and earth as well. At first Sean (Andrew Bennett) is so aloof as to be hostile toward Cait whereas Eibhlin (Carrie Crowley) is warmly open to her, taking tender care of her, bathing her, fitting clothes to her. Cait's loutish dad was in such a hurry to be off he took her suitcase with him and never brought it back. The summer passes quickly. Eventually Sean warms to the girl, who works with him on the farm. I like the quiet scenes that show Cait visibly growing emotionally under these terms of honesty and love. Which honesty, however, starts to become troubled by family secrets. There’s something this kindly couple is not telling her. That inadvertently falls to a family friend, Una (Joan Sheehy, who almost steals the show), who alone on a walk with Cait quizzes her about gossipy stuff like whether Eibhlin uses butter or margarine in her pastries, and then about much more intimate family details Cait had no idea about. The picture shifts here and ultimately makes the bonding between all three even tighter. However, the summer must end and Cait must go back to her family, where the newborn baby is squalling and everything is chaos. They must say goodbye under these conditions. The Quiet Girl is a wonderful small movie full of revelations and surprises and great characters. Recommended.