'The quiet girl', the most moving movie you'll see this year

Very occasionally, one of those films that leaves one completely amazed appears on the big screen.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
25 February 2023 Saturday 05:29
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'The quiet girl', the most moving movie you'll see this year

Very occasionally, one of those films that leaves one completely amazed appears on the big screen. The quiet girl, released yesterday in Spanish cinemas, is one of them and it achieves it with a story with an apparently simple plot, set in rural Ireland in 1981 and involving many emotions on the surface. The protagonist is Cáit, a very quiet and calm nine-year-old girl -as the film's title indicates- who is invisible in a poor, large and dysfunctional family. Because no one pays any attention to her. And she likes to hide in the grass in the field or under the bed to go even more unnoticed.

He is not doing very well at school either, he has trouble reading and has no friends. Her mother is pregnant and she forgets to prepare breakfast for Cáit and his three sisters. Her father, another man of few words and in a permanent bad mood, frequently visits bars and defines her as "the wanderer" when her lover on duty asks who she is when she gets into the car and the little girl asks her. She watches silently from the back seat. Without consulting anything about her, her parents decide to send her to the house of some distant relatives to spend the summer in County Waterford, one of the areas of the country where Gaelic is still spoken. That way they will have one less mouth to feed. Neither kisses nor goodbyes when it's time to say goodbye.

The girl, as if she were an object that goes from one place to another, gets into the car on the way to a new place that will end up being a true revelation. Eibhlin, her mother's distant cousin, will receive her with open arms and exquisite sweetness. He turns to her, he needs to protect her. Instead, Sean, her husband, will keep his distance at first.

Seasoned in short films, Irishman Colm Bairéad has directed his first film based on Foster, the acclaimed story that writer Claire Keegan published in 2010. "I read the story for the first time in 2018 and fell in love with it immediately. I couldn't help but cry as I turned the pages and I knew I wanted to make a film. It deals with themes that I feel very close to and that I have already explored in my shorts, such as childhood and the basic needs of a child. I felt the need to protect Cáit. From In fact, two years before reading it I became a father and it seemed to me that it was destiny. It has been an honor to direct it", the director happily affirms in an interview with La Vanguardia by videoconference from Dublin.

After his successful stint at the Berlinale last year, where he won the Crystal Bear for the best film of the Generation Kplus, and the three Seminci awards, including the Silver Spike, on March 12 he will fight for the Oscar in the category of best international film, quite a milestone for a film spoken in the Irish language. The film is part of a project to promote Irish cinema and, moreover, it has been an absolute box office success in its country since it was released in May. "I feel like I'm over the moon. For people to go to the cinema and pay to see it, for the critics to speak so highly of it and for it to have done so well at the box office...it's unbelievable. Never before has an Irish language film been nominated. to the Oscar. I am very grateful and proud", he confesses.

Above all, she is moved that so many people have approached her to tell her how they have identified with what is happening to the girl. "Cáit needs love and to feel cared for, but she doesn't get it from her family. It's heartbreaking because there are so many children today who don't get the love they need from their parents. That's why this story is so relevant and cathartic for many viewers." , point.

Especially with the relationship that is being established between Cáit and Sean and how beneficial it is for both. In her day-to-day life on the farm, the minor will feel more and more free in a home where she will learn to smile and at the same time she keeps a painful secret. "Sean is a loving man but he is afraid of getting too close to her. He knows that love can be a dangerous thing because of that tragic episode from the past that it carries with it."

The great choice of the film, which shows off beautiful photography and displays extraordinary pictorial composition planes, paying attention to the small and significant details, lies in the wonderful performance of Catherine Clinch, quite a discovery. "It took us a long time to find her. Almost seven months. Obviously we needed a girl who could speak Irish, a minority language in Ireland, and we looked in schools. But she also had to know how to act and Catherine came into our lives like a small miracle because she showed that she was capable of taking on the stamina and strength that her character demands. The responsibility of carrying the weight of the story is huge even for an adult, and she's in every scene of the movie." Her gestures and her look say it all. Words are unnecessary.

Bairéad maintains that the tape is about silence, that of children and the Irish people. "The one that comes from fear, shame, pain and even love." And, in a way, the girl's inability to show her emotions is a characteristic of the Irish people at the time, "which is still present in our society." The main challenge of the film was elongating the story of the book, which is quite short. The director created the beginning and, from the second act, he was faithful even to the dialogues, despite the fact that Keegan wrote them in English and he in Gaelic. Another challenge was finding a visual language that would honor the point of view of the book, written in the present and in the first person through the eyes and heart of Cáit.

The director believes that the tension that breathes the story does not come from the story itself but from the experience lived by the girl. "I wanted people to remember what it's like to be a kid and be confused, not knowing what's going on around us." And what did the author think of the film adaptation? "She is delighted and that is the best gift of all. I hope I can bring more of her books to the movies."