Review of The Quiet Girl (2022) by Tmbrz — 11 May 2023

This is a truly beautiful film. You want to step right through the movie screen and come out the other side at the Kinsella dairy farm. I love the evocation of life in the Irish countryside--the lush green meadows; a forest grove echoing with birdsong; a shaded, spring-fed well of cool, crystal water; and above it all, a pale-blue, high-summer sky. Then there's the Kinsella home with its kitchen warm and bright with the glow of reflected sunlight, where Eibhlin and Cait tend to their daily chores together. This is a home without screens--not even on the windows--where the only handheld devices are potato peelers and galvanized zinc pails.

Some critics have called "The Quiet Girl" a simple story simply told, but the film does hold complexities. You have the contrast between Cait's fractious parents and neglectful family home, and the Kinsellas' loving marriage and caring, comfortable dwelling, yet Cait will prove to be more at risk at the latter household than the former.

There is also the theme of secrets which runs through the film, the secret of the Kinsellas' dead son which Cait only learns from a nosey neighbour who, in turn, interrogates Cait to find out secrets about the Kinsellas. When Sean and Eibhlin return Cait to her parents, all three agree to keep secret Cait's near-death experience at the well.

The last moments of the film found me sitting misty-eyed in the dark, but a happy ending leaving Cait with the Kinsellas would have seemed contrived and unconvincing. As it is, Cait returns home mentally and emotionally fortified by the life lessons in grief and joy she has learned from the Kinsellas and the other adults she has come to know over the preceding summer. And above all, she knows that she is loved.

In Carrie Keegan's story, "Foster", she has her little girl say of her improved reading: "It was like learning to ride a bike; I felt myself taking off, the freedom of going places I couldn't have gone before, and it was easy." It's a minor point, but I wish the film had highlighted Cait's burgeoning love of reading a little more. Incidentally, my two adult daughters still have their copy of the same 1920s vintage edition of "Heidi" that we see Cait reading in the film.