geezer cinema: the quiet girl (colm bairéad, 2022)

I wanted to like The Quiet Girl. I expected to like The Quiet Girl. And now that I've seen it, I don't have any real complaints. Yet somehow, I was disappointed

Disappointed might not even be the right word, because that implies a committed reaction, whereas I'm more at the point of "that was OK, now what?" First-time director Colm Bairéad shows a good command of the medium. Young Catherine Clinch, who plays the title character, is excellent. The title is appropriate ... she is indeed a quiet girl, and Bairéad gives us a largely quiet movie. I don't know what I would do differently. But the subtleties didn't connect for me. I wasn't bored, but I wasn't affected enough by the quiet plight of the girl.

Perhaps the problem is with me, and The Quiet Girl is just another Not for Steven movie. Certainly it was a success with critics, and it picked up an Oscar nomination. Maybe I'll watch it again sometime and finally see what I'm missing. I wouldn't be surprised if Bairéad makes some good movies in the future, and it's easy to imagine Clinch becoming one of our finer actors. But it mostly left me empty.