The Quiet Girl (2022)

This is indeed a movie about a very quiet girl. And it is an Irish language film, with 95% of the dialogue in Irish, and English words peppered in only occasionally (there are subtitles for both). "The Quiet Girl" (Irish title “An Cailín Ciúin”) is the first Irish-language film to be nominated for an Academy Award (this year's Best International Feature). It's a milestone for Irish-language film. Cáit, the girl is a wary and watchful figure. She has survived her chaotic neglectful home life—her drunken father, her harried mother, the crushing poverty, too many siblings and one on the way—by making herself as small and still as possible. The cinematograpy is gorgeous. The focus is on the details: the trees whirring by outside the car in a dizzying blur, the high-flung blue sky peeping through, the inky-black darkness of a bar’s interior at midday, the way shafts of sunlight pierce through still pools of water. Adults are seen from below, or the side. They are unknowable mysteries to Cáit. And she blossoms ever so slightly when she goes to stay with childless relatives who cherish her. It is simple and sparse and gorgeous to behold.