"The Quiet Girl" by Colm Bairéad (2022)

 

Just a previous week I was celebrating a directorial debut by British actress Rebecca Hall and now i am blown away by directorial debut of young Irish director Colm Bairéad who was born in 1981, so yes, kids are OK and the world is in a good hands. As much as we get hopeless and stressed about the state of the world, there will always be kids who have their own perspective and its wonderful to understand that the future belongs to them. Perhaps this is just as it should be, some new souls uncluttered by our prejudices and ballast.

This lovely, delicate movie is about the young unloved and neglected Cáit (luminous Catherine Clinch) whose huge family practically don't even notice her and when her heavily pregnant mother gets close to giving a birth (again), they pack her unceremoniously to spend the summer with distant relatives she have never met before. Nobody tells her anything about it, nobody asks her about her opinion, in fact during the whole car ride her father hardly even speaks to her. (And he even forgets the suitcase with her clothes) In the new surroundings, at some lovely clean farm, surrounded for the first time with love and affection, Cáit blossoms like a flower and even opens up a bit - its a healing process both for her and for childless couple who now take care of her, even if its just one summer. At the end, she has to go back to her school and her family but we know she will never forget this summer. 

Just like Cáit herself, this is a completely soft and gentle movie from a perspective of a shy, observing child. Because it speaks with understanding of child's soul, we can all instantly connect with her heart, since we were all kids once and know what it is to be surrounded with grown-ups and their coded world. Some of them are threatening (father), some are comical (nosy neighbour), basically Cáit is a child left to a mercy of the world - luckily the relatives are here to love and protect her, even if just for a short period. I grew up in a cold and hostile household where they would also pack me off to a countryside during summer vacation, so this movie spoke to me - it had open some old wounds and reminded me on people long gone. I could watch this again, its quite a unforgettable little jewel.