‘The Quiet Girl’ Review: Ireland’s Oscar Entry Proves There’s Such a Thing as Too Much Quiet Contemplation

thewrap.com:

Cáit runs back home, we see a crying baby, and her mother upbraids her for coming into the house with mud on her shoes.Bairéad and director of photography Kate McCullough (Hulu’s “Normal People”) emphasize Cáit’s alienation from her surroundings in their compositions, but they also strive to give the images a very soft look, with ghostly light on Cáit’s serious face.

Cáit is always looking down and then looking up apprehensively, as if she expects some calamity at any moment, which is justified when boys knock some milk into her lap at school; other kids call her “a weirdo” because she keeps so much to herself.The effects with light that McCullough gets in these early scenes can be entrancing, as when she catches the way that a white neon light above a bar molds the head of Cáit’s father in profile, or the pink light from a television set as it is reflected on a wall.

This first section of the film is from Cáit’s point of view, and Cáit is a daydreamer, a woolgatherer, and these visuals get that across.But once Cáit’s father brings her to the house of relatives because they have too many mouths to feed at home, Bairéad starts to repeat his visual effects, showing us a long shot of the kitchen at least twice too many times.

The viewpoint subtly shifts to Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley), who looks at Cáit with dawning and intense love when the little girl gets out of her father’s car.Eibhlín tells Cáit to never keep secrets from her: “If there are secrets in the house, there is shame in the house,” she says.