‘The Quiet Girl’ Review: A Heartfelt, Beautifully Homespun Tale of a Lonely Irish Childhood
variety.comJessica Kiang There are different types of quiet. There’s the quiet of peace and serenity, and the quiet of repression and shame.
There’s the quiet of contented, absorbing work. And there’s the quiet of fear, the kind of lonely silence a bullied child might retreat into when she hears the heavy tread of an impatient adult on the stairs, or the catcalling of other, brasher kids.
Colm Bairéad’s gentle, straightforward, largely Irish-language “The Quiet Girl” has an ear finely attuned to all those types of hush, and to the tender feelings they can contain.Nine-year-old Cáit, played in a lovely, worried debut by Catherine Clinch (if you’re looking for the next Saoirse Ronan, you might well have found her here) is never going to be loud.
The easily overlooked kid in a household of scrappier siblings, she is first seen hiding in the fields while her frustrated mother, pregnant again, calls for her to come in.
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