Childhood is perhaps the time in our lives where we learn the most – not only in the sense of gaining an official, formal education, but learning about the many challenges that face us in the years ahead, which can be both intimidating and poignant for any child undergoing the inevitable process of getting older. This is the general intention of The Quiet Girl (Gaelic: An Cailín Ciúin), in which director Colm Bairéad takes the novel Foster by Claire Keegan, and crafts an achingly beautiful story about a young girl making her way through a variety of challenging situations over the course of a single summer, after her parents send her away to live with distant relatives. Suddenly, the quaint rural Irish farm in which she had always found her sanctuary is replaced with a more urban environment, her new home nestled in the heart of a charming small town, replacing the wide open spaces of the fields that used to surround her, with the bustling lives of strangers. This film is one of the most singularly beautiful works of art to be produced in the last year, with so many compelling and enticing ideas situated at the core of the story – and despite being relatively new to the industry, the director manages to craft quite a compelling and engrossing story of identity as defined by someone going through their formative years, developing their worldview as they navigate new and exciting parts of life, while trying to maintain their roots, since all of us desire the sweet embrace of home, even if the precise definition of what that means can shift over time, as we learn that home isn’t necessarily a place as it is a feeling, a sensation instilled in us from a young age, and something that we continuously search for throughout our lives. A film that can establish such a bold conceptual framework, and yet feel so vibrant and compelling without being dense, is immediately worthy of our time, and The Quiet Girl certainly warrants our attention as a true gem of a film.

The coming-of-age narrative is a concept that has existed for long enough for it to have developed a set of cliches, and it has become common practice to adjudicate films on both the extent to which they manage to avoid following a particular formula, and how they can step away from these tropes and be wholly original, which isn’t often, primarily because there is very little that can be done with these stories that are both bespoke and authentic. What directors like Bairéad endeavour to do is not to deviate from the common structure, but rather embrace it in a way that feels genuine, which is where the charm emerges. Set in the early 1980s (although based on the life the main character was living prior to leaving her home, you would struggle to pinpoint it to a specific era, which shows the extent of her pastoral surroundings), the film carefully examines the experience of growing up in a very challenging time – the story avoids actively referring to socio-cultural matters outside of the overall narrative, but there are elements that hint at how society functions, which are explored with enough precision to make them notable but not distract from the more simple elements of the story, which is instead more focused on filtering these events through the eyes of a child, who is only now starting to encounter some of the more harsh realities that life holds for her, albeit being guided through it by her temporary guardians, who adopt her with the initial intention of caring for her for a single summer, but somehow manage to make her wise to the true nature of the outside world. We may only spend the equivalent of a single season with the young Cáit, but we accompany her as she learns about life, each day yielding new lessons that eventually form the foundation of her future identity, which is formed from different experiences, both positive and negative, and which could only come about through organic experiences, which are not always particularly comfortable or endearing.

The role of Cáit is played so brilliantly by Catherine Clinch, who is making her acting debut as the protagonist of this story. It is granted by the title that this is not a performance that we should expect to be playing to the rafters – but it also proves that there is virtue in subtlety, even if we can’t initially see it based on a cursory glance. Much like the film that surrounds her, Clinch is intent on finding the most authentic version of this character, frequently looking inwards as she undergoes her own exploration of what this character represents – and coming from an actor as young as her, this is truly impressive, and a clear sign of this being a revelatory performance. We don’t often find child actors being capable of such incredible acting – she can command the screen without even saying a word, and in the few moments where she needs to show bursts of emotion, it feels genuine, rather than just being another case of mistaking a young actor’s enthusiasm for acting talent. Clinch is remarkable, and her performance is truly extraordinary, a layered and detailed examination of the internal processes that a young child goes through when being introduced to the wider world. She’s accompanied by the two actors playing her parents, Andrew Bennett and Carrie Crowley being absolutely extraordinary, and being able to calibrate their own performances to be strong without eclipsing the film’s main character. Crowley in particular lingers with us – she is the heart of The Quiet Girl, playing the part of the foster mother with such heartbreaking honesty and dedication (and when we discover the background of this couple, and why they seem to approach the subject of parenthood with such hesitation, it leads to a shattering revelation that forms the crucial emotional core of the film), and navigating the challenging material with such commitment. The film may be built on the more subtle approach to acting, but the performances are uniformly exceptional, and the director shepherds his actors towards finding the most authentic versions of these characters, which is a process that took time, but was perfectly worth the effort, based on the results.

The theme of tradition opposing modernity is used incidentally throughout The Quiet Girl, which is very much a film firmly rooted in the Irish culture, to the point where every decision the director made (including filming it entirely on location, and making the film in Gaelic, despite the source novel being written in English) was done to emphasize the culture and its people in a way that they are rarely given the opportunity to be portrayed. It is a film that is inherently rooted in a more sad, downbeat story – but this doesn’t mean the film can’t be a fervent celebration of the culture. Bairéad spends a considerable amount of time exploring the roots of these characters, questioning their origins and how they appreciate and represent their own culture, which can sometimes be difficult if you aren’t always given a reason to show patriotic pride. Logically, the film aims to avoid stereotypes as much as possible, instead functioning as a delicate realist tale of ordinary life in a small Irish hamlet, one that is fiercely proud of their identity, but also not engrossed in their own culture to not look outward. The film doesn’t emphasize the point too heavily (at least not to the point where it is anything more than a minor theme), but we do encounter various characters who show a very different side of life in such a village, which directly mirrors the young protagonist as she develops her own identity through seeing her culture manifesting in different ways. The use of Gaelic itself is a daring choice, especially since there is a legitimate fear within the linguist community that it is a language that is slowly disappearing as more speakers embrace English as a lingua franca, and where Bairéad makes the very smart decision to tell this film almost entirely in the region’s native tongue, not only to give it a sense of authenticity, but to record this beautiful language in this powerful ode to a country and its people that are worth celebrating, especially in a form as simple and evocative as this stunning film.

The Quiet Girl is a film composed from observing the human condition without any filter that obscures our view. It is a simple story about a young girl navigating new challenges, patiently waiting out the long summer days with her adoptive parents, but eventually forming such a vivid sense of self, she begins to wonder whether her old life was something worth feeling these early sensations of nostalgia, or whether she can simply reconfigure her desire to her new home (which is so beautifully encapsulated in the final scene, which is by far the most heartbreakingly beautiful moment of the past year), and especially the people who made it feel like the place where she can be truly comfortable. There are many secrets lurking throughout this film, and the challenge is unearthing them in order to understand what they represent – each one is a clue that reveals something new about these characters, each one adding to this vivid tapestry of the life of a young girl, whose entire worldview is not only resharpened, but entirely changed, upon realizing that there is more to life than her pastoral surroundings. The Quiet Girl is an extraordinary achievement – rich and evocative, but also deeply meaningful and profoundly beautiful in terms of both its narrative and execution (Kate McCullough is the unheralded hero of this production, using her camera in the endeavour to capture the splendour of the Irish countryside with so much elegance and beauty), which points towards so much talent being responsible for the creation of this film – both Bairéad and Clinch make a strong case for becoming mainstays of contemporary cinema, the former being an exceptional craftsman, and the latter a truly gifted actor who refuses to let her youth be a distraction – and it ultimately becomes such a beautiful, poetic experience, and one that we are not likely to forget anytime soon.