Catherine Clinch in The Quiet Girl

Review

The Quiet Girl review – deeply moving tale of rural Ireland already feels like a classic

A silent child is sent away to live with foster parents on a farm in this gem of a film from first-time feature director Colm Bairéad

Foster by Claire Keegan

Peter Bradshaw

Wednesdady 11 May 2022

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. There’s a lovely scene in which the “quiet girl” of the title, 10-year-old Cáit (played by newcomer Catherine Clinch), is reading Heidi before bedtime, and this movie, for all its darkness and suppressed pain, has the solidity, clarity and storytelling gusto of that old-fashioned Alpine children’s tale – about the little girl sent away to live in a beautiful place with her grandfather.

 

Catherine Clinch in The Quiet Girl by Colm Bairéad

Interview

‘I fell in love with it in a profound way’: how The Quiet Girl’s fostering story captured its director’s heart

First-time director Colm Bairéad on turning the novella Foster by Claire Keegan into the tear-jerking tour de force that swept the Irish Film and TV awards

Foster by Claire Keegan

Cath Clarke

12 May 2022

Colm Bairéad resigned himself to walking away empty-handed from the Irish Film and TV awards in March. His tiny-budget Irish language drama The Quiet Girl was up against Kenneth Branagh’s multi-Oscar-nominated juggernaut, Belfast. “We were like: ‘OK, well, that was lovely.’ We’d got 10 nominations. We’re just happy with that, you know?’”

But, on the night, The Quiet Girl swept the board, with eight wins, including best film. “Winning all those awards was, er, extraordinary.” Bairéad, 41, looks mildly embarrassed. He is modest and thoughtful, not fully relaxed at being the centre of attention. I suspect that the hour we spend chatting at the Soho offices of the film company distributing his film is about 59 minutes too long for him.

The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin in Irish) is his first film. It is the beautiful and extremely moving story of a nine-year-old girl from a poor family who is farmed out to relatives while her mother gives birth to yet another baby. It is based on Claire Keegan’s acclaimed 2010 novella, Foster, which Bairéad read after spotting it on a Top 10 list of books by Irish female writers. It left him floored, in floods of tears: “I fell in love with the story in such a profound way.” Then panic set in: “I was sure someone had snapped up the rights. But, miraculously, they were available.”