After enjoying resounding success at festivals, notably in Berlin, where it won the Silver Bear from the teenage jury, Colm Bairéad’s feature debut fiction film now represents Ireland nominated for the Oscar for Best international film, facing big names such as Saint-Omer And Eo. If he undeniably deserves his place in the prestigious competition, The Quiet Girl however, only had a very discreet theatrical release in Quebec, compared to its competitors.
Don’t be mistaken though. This touching initiatory tale set in rural Ireland in the 1980s has everything to please local moviegoers, especially those most fond of contemplative and gentle cinema.
If only for its unique treatment of the language, many Quebecers are likely to recognize themselves in it. It is the biggest critical and commercial success in the history of Irish cinema to have been shot in the country’s first official language, Irish Gaelic. Assimilated into the neighboring hegemonic Anglophone culture, the characters constantly navigate between the two languages. We even see them making small gestures of resistance on a daily basis, between learning their language at school and practicing their funeral rites at home.
Paradoxically, it is especially in the unspoken that they manage to move, to shine. And The Quiet Girl, adapted from the novella Foster (2010), by Claire Keegan, remains above all a story of personal rather than national emancipation.
We thus witness the emancipation of the very shy, but oh so sensitive, Cáit (Catherine Clinch). Neglected by her family and her classmates, she seems at first sight as puny as she is touching. Very poor, her parents do not have the means to meet her needs and those of their newborn child at the same time. So they entrust her, one day, to her uncle and aunt, who are better off, for a summer. Apparently very warm, they however hide a heavy secret that risks compromising their relationship.
The young girl nevertheless weaves strong ties with them, so much so that they question, for Cáit, the very meaning of family. “Can we choose our parents? she looks like she wonders when her melancholy gaze is lost in the eyes of her kind aunt Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley). The old couple then teaches her to love and be loved as no one has done before.
Despite performances by actors that go straight to the heart, some avoidable screenplay shortcuts harm the credibility of certain scenes. Fortunately, the staging always saves the day. Each shot, nicely lit with warm colors that contrast with the gray skies of Ireland, is brilliantly composed and always places the figures in the center of a well-defined frame – reinforced by the square format of the image, which ennobles them.
Both universal and deeply rooted in a subtly represented local culture, The Quiet Girl opens the way for Colm Bairéad to a brilliant career as a fiction writer.