The Quiet Girl

Director: Cilm Bairead

2022

29 March 2025

See

Adapted from a short story by Claire Keegan titled Foster and set in 1981 in rural Ireland, Cait (Catherine Clinch) is a reserved nine-year-old of poor parents with too many children to care for properly. To give her mother respite during the latest pregnancy her father takes Cait to stay with a distant cousin Eibhlin (Carrie Crowley) and her husband Sean (Andrew Bennett) a middle-aged childless couple.

Think

Why is Cait quiet? The louder children get all the attention and so she disappears into herself. Scenes of not so benign neglect; going to school without lunch, taking a bath in hot water for the first time, the dirt being gently scrubbed off Cait’s skin make your heart ache. It shows both how childhood shouldn’t and should be. 

Feel

Cait slowly comes out of her shell and it’s so tender. It comes across in the Irish language, musical and lilting, subtitling a culture at once familiar and foreign. Exposition gets me every time and the backstory of how Eibhlin and Sean’s son drowned and then Cait falling into a well could be on the nose. But everything about this film is subtle and delicate. Even that montage at the films climax was especially effective, reminiscent of Audrey Tatu running to swelling music in A Very Long Engagement. But this time being in the position of the child realising what quality care is and the love that grows from it, being drawn to it like sunflowers growing to light and warmth. It gives me chills thinking about how rare those feelings and moments are, here it’s like earned ASMR after the deprivation she went through.