The world could be defined for many, broadly speaking, as a dichotomy between love and heartbreak. Love as shelter, care, listening, patience, food, light, caresses and looks. Heartbreak as cold, indifference, famine and loneliness. The line that divides love and its absence becomes the story of this separation in The Quiet Girl, Colm Bairéad’s feature film debut, a film as simple in its proposal as it is beautiful in its plot and its staging. So much so that it has become the great jewel of the Oscars, in which it will compete for the statuette for best foreign film.
Altruism, that quality that one believes is intrinsic to the family, so associated with innate love and the maternal bond, becomes in this film, on the other hand, a quality consubstantial to the will. The protagonist of this story, set in 1981is a nine-year-old girl, Cáit, who lives with her parents and her many siblings somewhere in rural Ireland, in an environment of physical and emotional poverty.
His father is a drinker and a playboy, incapable of loving. His mother, a woman bitter and resigned to the situation she has had to live. Shortly before the birth of her new brother, the little girl is sent to spend a summer with some distant relatives, in a beautiful farm and with a well-being until then unknown to her.
The protagonist’s world has been built from absences and deficiencies, in an environment in which dinner, clothes and hugs, if any, are fortuitous, so the journey she makes from her imperfect and broken home to house of some strangers also becomes the discovery of love, with capital letters, often so inherent to the closest family, to parents and siblings. Her summer becomes help and a balm for her reality, and in that summer landscape, with the help of her foster parents, she rebuilds her education in affections, so distorted or non-existent.
The Quiet Girl could be the simple and delicate reverse of another of the great films of this edition of the Oscars: The FabelmansSteven Spielberg’s film
It’s funny, because The Quiet Girl (an Irish adaptation of the story fosterby Claire Keegan) could be the simple and delicate reverse of another of the great films of this edition of the Oscars: The Fabelmans, the tape with which Steven Spielberg recalls the young man who wanted to become a film director. Both feature films fall within the “coming-of-age” genre, focusing on discovery and coming of age, but they start from different places.
While Spielberg’s film is a family epic, Bairead’s film is a delicate portrait of love In the home. The first love in the family is the starting point in Los Fabelman and it becomes a goal in The Quiet Girl. While the first starts from emotional well-being to discover disappointment and the most bittersweet dimension of life, the Irish film starts from bitterness to discover the emotional shelter, the foster family as an affective awakening.
The Quiet Girl: a look at hope
Despite all its strengths, especially the moving story it presents and a brilliant visual invoice, the truth is that the competitors of The Quiet Girl at the Oscars they are not easy rivals, especially the German No news at the frontan anti-war allegation, adaptation of the novel by Erich Maria Remarquewhich triumphed in the recent edition of the Bafta awards, or Argentina, 1985, From Santiago Mitre. In addition, close (Belgium) and EO (Poland) have not gone unnoticed either and can challenge the Irish on the podium of emotion.
The story of The Quiet Girl it is as simple as it is impeccable, and at a cinematographic level it has two qualities that have made it one of the favorite films in this edition of the Oscars, and thanks to word of mouth it will possibly have an interesting run in theaters, as it did recently held aftersunthe debut of Charlotte Wells.
Beauty is an end in this film, beyond the story, a reason that has led some to wonder if it is artificial, if it will not be a mere distraction to attract the viewer
On the one hand, the performance of the girl protagonist stands out, the actress Catherine Clinch, capable of attracting attention only with a serene and silent look, but at the same time impatient to find hope, a trait in which many have seen the Legacy of British filmmaker Terence Daviesalso this editor of Vozpopuli. The tenderness often defiant, calm and restless in a permanent contradiction raises so many questions every second that one cannot help but get into his head: Who is going to take care of me? do they abandon me? Who will love me?
The Quiet Girldoubly awarded during its passage through the Berlinale and winner of the Silver Spike, the Audience Award and the Critics Award at the Valladolid Film FestivalIt is also one of the most beautiful films that one will have the opportunity to see in a long time. However, beauty is an end in this film, beyond the story, a reason that has led some to wonder if it is artificial, if it will not be a mere distraction to attract the viewer, even if the director is more concerned with how the film tells what it tells, more focused on the appearance than the background.
The truth is that the silences, the ellipses, are one of the pillars in this film, also in its characters, so one cannot imagine how else, if not from the total beauty that cinema allows, one could tell a story. film that wants to take the viewer to hope. If aesthetics were a mere pretext, your 90 minutes they would have expanded in such a fashionable exercise to repeat and add without any sense. Silences are here the antidote to life and beauty the balm that leads to hope.
