Critics reviews

But while The Quiet Girl, Colm Bairéad’s multi-award-winning Irish-language drama, might be small in scale, it’s one of the most exquisitely realised films of the year. There’s a kinship with Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman in the crystalline delicacy of the storytelling and the way it plays on the heartstrings like a harp.

Colm Bairéad proves that gentle accretion of detail can bring great authentic power to a final emotional payoff. The journey is superbly led by a beguiling performance from the young star Catherine Clinch.

There is little danger that weight of expectation will crush this delicately beautiful gossamer construction... There is a pervasive sense of unspoken menace lurking just outside the frame (or somewhere in the near past or future). But it is also a celebration of uncomplicated human kindness.

It’s immaculately shot in near-square frames (aka Academy aspect ratio) by the Normal People cinematographer Kate McCullough, and has a powerful, tearjerking finale.

At times, the crisp shots and liquidy use of light can feel close to a Kerrygold ad, but the film’s sharp emotional intelligence stops it tipping into the realm of commercial sentimentality.

This beautiful and compassionate film from first-time feature director Colm Bairéad, based on the novella Foster by Claire Keegan, is a child’s-eye look at our fallen world; already it feels to me like a classic.

The film is low on incident, and could easily threaten to be slight, but it’s generous to its characters and invigoratingly sweet, ultimately singing to the virtues of peacefulness.

In Colm Bairéad’s arresting feature debut, quietness not only aids the tension of those initial days spent in discomfort but also allows for the tenderness of small acts of kindness to linger... By the time the devastating final scene comes to be, every single heartstring has been masterfully pulled.

Held together by a collection of strong performances and spectacular cinematography, The Quiet Girl is a remarkably touching coming-of-age summer tale.

Unfettered, coltish, An Cailin Ciuin unfolds as a thing of beauty when it becomes clear how affection can brighten the darkest of skies and cause flowers to bloom in the most barren of landscapes. The overarching message to take from An Cailin Ciuin is that a family is not necessarily the one you are born into, and the ties that bind can be found in the hearts of strangers.

The Quiet Girl is thoughtful, spiritual in its stillness but alive with the hum of the land and the emotions it guards... Certainly, this is a quiet film, but it speaks in high volumes.

There are different types of quiet. There’s the quiet of peace and serenity, and the quiet of repression and shame. There’s the quiet of contented, absorbing work. And there’s the quiet of fear... Colm Bairéad’s gentle, straightforward, largely Irish-language “The Quiet Girl” has an ear finely attuned to all those types of hush, and to the tender feelings they can contain.