Welcome to episode 4 of the Monochrome Picture Show. Today we'll be talking about the new Irish film on Colleen Keown, or The Quiet Girl in English. Directed by Colin Buraid, it is his first feature film. This episode will contain spoilers for the film, so please watch the film and come back and listen to the episode when you're done. To summarise the story, we focus on a young girl named Cotch. She grows up in a crowded, somewhat uncaring family. With a father that drinks and gambles too much, and with a mother who is unable to give her attention with another child on the way, she is starved of attention and affection. Over the summer, she is sent to stay in the countryside with her mother's cousin Eileen and her husband Sean so that she won't be under anyone's feet. Cotch begins to blossom under their supervision, though we begin to suspect they are keeping a secret from her. Fun fact about this film. Colin Braid went to the Irish Film and TV Awards expecting to be beaten by Kenneth Branagh's Belfast and said he was simply happy to get nominated. In the end, Braid's film walked away with 8 out of 10 of the awards it was nominated for, including Best Film. And I think it deserves that. I think it was better than Belfast before. Oh, absolutely better than Belfast. Much more heartfelt, honest, genuine. It felt more genuine. Right? Oh, yes. Not to take anything away from Belfast because I enjoyed it as well, but... Oh yeah, me too. really had a harsh to it that you just couldn't deny. Absolutely. Over the course of this episode we will begin with a discussion on form, touching on plot, cinematography and acting before we talk about meaning, so what the story meant to us, what we feel like the director was trying to convey, while also talking about it in terms of its relation to Late Spring, the Iezajuro Ozu film we discussed in the last episode. So to begin, what did you feel like in terms of plot or... Well, it comes from Foster by Claire Keegan. So I think you can really tell that it comes from a written form, that it was developed from a written story. How so? Because the way the story is constructed and the fact that Foster is actually written in first person, they did manage to keep the point of view in first person, even though there's not necessarily a narrator's voice and stuff, or the kid's voice, you know what I mean? So I feel they didn't divert too much from the actual short story, short novel rather, it was inspired by. What I thought was really stunning about the film in particular was the fact that the structure of the plot felt healing and watching it felt like a healing experience. The pacing, the structure, the development of culture, the character, it felt like there transported you into a different realm for a time being and while you're there you're just totally entranced. And it does feel like you're watching this person heal over the course of 90 minutes. And having said that, it doesn't feel like 90 minutes. It feels far longer. Not to say that that's a bad thing at all. It feels like it's just a completely different, it's like a Tuna and an Oog, which is an Irish folk myth about a different place, a different land where time slows down. And it feels just like that, where time feels different the film especially on the big screen. I agree you know I don't know if necessarily it feels longer it just feels timeless like it could be anytime you completely lose yourself in the film and which doesn't happen very often these days you know it doesn't happen so that's really that makes it really special. I agree with you completely actually I have some things to say about that but editing and the cinematography so maybe we can talk about them a little later if you have anything else to say about the plot per se. Well one thing I might just say quickly is that part of what makes the film feel timeless as if time doesn't exist when you're watching the film is the fact that the plot is so seamless not one moment stands out if that makes sense there aren't big melodramatic that feel especially important but each scene feels like it's contributing to her as a person and as a little girl who's growing up it feels like each scene is supremely significant and we get to watch like Braid build these blocks I think also the fact that there's no music the majority of the film I think there's two scenes when there's a montage and at the end that he uses and I think that also contributes to the timeless feel. Yeah, I agree. He also uses found, not found footage, but pre-existent footage of old Irish television and choirs, like recorded from a TV program, which I find awesome because it's diegetic. So he makes it diegetic, so there's no non-diegetic music, I think. I mean, if there was, it was so seamless that we both didn't pick up on it. There's a lovely article from the Irish Times written by Donald Clark. I just wanted to mention that he says a very similar thing. He defines it as a celebration of uncomplicated human kindness, which I think it's on point because it's exactly as you said, there's no big scene. There's no like, I mean, there are plenty of heartbreaking sequences, but they're not planned out to be standing out from the rest, right? every scene works together with the rest so there's no hierarchical aspect of filling and important scenes. Every scene is important because every experience of her is important. In that respect it didn't feel Hollywoodian at all. It didn't feel like there was the final catharsis of the character being the dramatic monologue. None of that's present in the film. your life that's holding you back. There's none of that. It was just very organic and very genuine, very real. Yeah. As we are comparing it to late spring, so last week we talked about the essentialist narrative structure of late spring, which is a term developed by Kate Geist. I think this term can also be applied. As we don't necessarily miss out on events like we did on late spring, special moments in the kids life and things like that, but more than anything we see daily aspects of life that in real life we wouldn't consider as cinematically relevant I suppose. So this is the essentialist part, but the way the director portrays them gives significance to them in very almost neorealist way. You know what I mean? I think it was a brilliant film overall. I'm thinking about the plot in relation to Late Spring as well, which there are similarities. I mean, that's actually part of the reason why we wanted to compare these two films was, number one, because of the content, which focuses on a girl in Oncology and QAnon, focuses on a girl building relationship with a surrogate mother and father. And in Late Spring, it's about a woman actively engaging with her relationship with her father. So we felt there were similarities, but especially in terms of the cinematography, which I think we can talk about now Oh, yeah, it's cinematography felt very similar which was ironic actually because when we got the chance to talk with the director and we were asking him about the visual style of the film and He said well, I've been told it looks a little bit like an Ozu film Oh, yeah, but I've never seen an Ozu film and we were sitting there thinking like yep It looks just like late spring. Just like it. Yeah. Yeah about the aspect of domestic space because it's not only present but it's fundamental. During the Q&A the director stated that the house where the majority of the film is set it's a character by itself. I mean that's exactly my angle to the discussion so I love it and I just wanted to draw the attention back to Banshoon when we were talking about the fact that it's a transitional story. The majority of scenes are shot in the house but corridors or alleys or anyway places of passage. And then in The Quiet Girl, the house becomes a character in the sense that the protagonist constantly interacts with the domestic space in several ways. It links quite nicely to phenomenology, I think. And in my opinion, the director made the choice of finding a way for the to step back into a childlike point of view of perception. Okay, we're both young adults so we're not too far away from the realm of childhood. So I still have quite present within myself how it felt to be a kid and interacting with the space around me. In Ankyl and Kune, the house, it's the character with which the And if we look at it from a point of view of the development of the character, at the beginning of the film, spoiler alert, she hides all the time, she hides in tall grass and she hides under beds, she doesn't speak, she doesn't interact with her siblings, she hides like in some sort of forest when escaping from school and stuff like that. She's constantly hiding and not interacting with the outside world. world. This conveys the fact that within her family she is never acknowledged her space, like her physical space in the world. Everybody's ignoring her, they're only looking for her when they want to see if she's still alive, but that's basically what they do. Which interestingly is what Sean does. Do you remember at the beginning of her stay with Eileen and Sean, Sean isn't especially friendly with her at the beginning. He's a little bit reserved, he doesn't really entertain the idea of hanging out with her. And then Eileen forces him to spend time with her by sending her off to work with him. And you know, she's really only there to hang around at his side. And then she disappears. And then Sean takes notice immediately. And he starts looking for her. And... finds she's still alive is relieved, but then of course is furious. Oh yeah. Because that always seems to be the case when parents lose their child and then they find them again. It's, oh my god, thank god you're still alive. Also, I'm gonna kill you. Don't ever do that to me again. Yeah. Exactly. But he has some sort of reaction and acknowledges the fact that, okay, I was worried you weren't okay. You are okay. Don't do that again. The mum can't find her for sequence of the movie is just them looking for her actually she is just hiding while you can hear out of screen voices of calling her name and stuff like that saying mommy's looking for you la and then when the mother actually finds her the only thing she says is you have mud under your shoes she wasn't even worried what is even going on I love the way they portray the family it's so dysfunctional in such a common way It's not violent, it's not over the top, it's just sad, bland and uncaring, you know, neglectful. Back to the house, the thing that I wanted to say, I just want to quickly relate it to Gaston Bachelard. He's a French philosopher, he wrote this book, it's called The Poetics of Space. It's amazing if you want to check it out, I'll leave the link in the description. But he has this amazing definition of the home in terms of its poetics, it as the topography of our intimate being. Topography being the, how do you say, the arrangements of natural and artificial elements within an area, but the area it's us. So it's basically the representation of our interior landscape and I love it because with the knowledge of this notion you then think at the beginning of the film this child only finds herself comfortable in hidden outside of her house so that her physical right for a space it's absolutely neglected and then when she gets to feel a little more comfortable in Eileen and Sean's house she starts to interact with different rooms and you see for example the texture of the and the pattern of the wallpaper there is this really the texture of the blanket or the food they're cooking anyway she starts to feel you know more comfortable around her environment and you can tell by the way the environment is shot around her because the point of view it's her point of view yeah I think that's really amazing way of looking at it. I think it's... own point because I think one issue in cinema is the way we portray, not kids necessarily because there's amazing child actors and actresses, but the way directors portray their way of looking at things and it's often demeaning and a little shallow and a little stereotypical and also draws a picture that is heavily stereotyped. So this is not the case in Ankeil and Cune. The director treats this character with extreme respect for the period in development she is in. That's great. He does. No, he does. There's no sarcasm in the film. It's probably the best way of describing it. Every character that... is put on screen feels like they are genuine to the extent that it's actually almost painful to watch sometimes because even sub characters like uh Koch's biological father oh yeah and i say biological because over the course of the film it feels like Sean becomes her dad yeah we also got the opportunity to speak with Michael Patrick, the... Yes. In the Q&A. He was talking about his approach to portraying her biological father, because he isn't in many scenes. He's in a few scenes in the beginning, and then he appears again at the end. But his approach to the character brought so many layers to him that it really shows when you're watching the film, because the way that he describes the character afterwards, you immediately think, oh yeah, that's exactly what you were doing, that's exactly who that character was, and you got that just from reading a few lines of dialogue. He describes him as an island of himself, because he's a character who's lost, who hasn't really found his way in life in certain ways, takes that out on his family by refusing to speak the Irish language with them and isolates himself completely. character he brings a whole lot of empathy to this person which humanizes him and it's a character that you don't want to empathize with because he's not a good father but in his portrayal of him you realize that actually there is a humanity there and that's what makes the film feel so real and as if it breathes almost. During the Q&A he said that his character knows he should do like that. Yeah I agree with everything you said. It's a very human portrayal of family environment. Yeah. While we're talking about the acting I'd like to touch on Andrew Bennett's character quickly. So he plays the character of Sean. I think that he does an amazing job playing Sean, plays the role so well because he made this... I mean if you've lived in Ireland for a long enough time when you're watching this person on screen, you might even confuse them for... like, you might even confuse Sean for somebody you know. Because he feels that genuine and that real. Bennett brings a charming, quiet stoicism to the character and he's rough around the edges and that's apparent from the beginning. But as scenes develop, Bennett brings a charming, quiet stoicism to the character and at the beginning, it's not very charming, it's more... Hostile, not even a hostile, but extremely disinterested. Disinterested, yeah. And he's rough around the edges, and that's apart from the beginning of the story, but over the course of the film you see that he really does have a good heart, and it comes out in organic ways. It's not melodramatic, there aren't moments where he reveals himself to be a good character really. It's just... you see him as a human and as somebody who has these feelings but perhaps struggles to show them because of the life that he's led and the experiences that he's had to live through. Oh yeah, we get to know that they lost a child. This is the spoiler alert part I suppose, which frames them then entirely differently. particularly Sean. Particularly him. Because Eileen we see as a very maternal loving figure from the beginning. Yeah. And she's played, she's played very well by Carrie Crawley. Oh she's amazing. And she has this beautiful tenderness to her where she will get down on her haunches and she'll look into Koch's eyes and you can just tell that she is a loving person from that moment. Very very first the car you feel like you can trust her. But with Sean you can see that there is the grief that he can't quite let go of immediately. He's not going to hand himself over to caught at the beginning. And over the course of the film he does and completely does so at the end which is absolutely heartbreaking to watch. You know if you don't cry at the end I don't know what you're made of. If we were to talk about the meaning behind the film it is a story about healing and growth. you see that with both Koch and Sean in particular. Eileen as well but I feel like the character of Sean has to come over these boundaries that he's put in front of himself. He's put barriers around himself that he doesn't want to cross again. Mm-hmm. And... in over the course of the film you see both Sean and Koch break down each other's boundaries and heal each other. And that's what makes the film so endearing. It is literally impossible not to cry at the ending. I think the two of us are welling up as we're talking about it. I definitely am. Oh my god, yes, no, the last sequence, it's so heartbreaking. And I remember one person in the audience asked the director what happens afterwards, of course, because we all want to know, because we don't get to know if Crotch then goes back and lives with them. which we all know she doesn't know. And that's exactly what the director says, he says I'm a realist so she doesn't. She stays with her biologic parents but the experience that she had with Sean and Eileen will shape her forever. That's what makes it a bittersweet story I feel because you could frame that as a sad ending but I don't, I... Number one, I don't think we needed to hear what Baraid had to say about the ending. I think actually the ending is quite apparent and that's all you need to know from it. Asking for more, I feel, is a little bit unnecessary. But that's just me. Yeah, no, no, I agree 100%. I think the shot of the biological father kind of like rushing over... Angrily. .. them, yeah, while Sean and Coach are hugging and he's angrily walking towards them. to know it's obvious what happens afterwards. Of course I'm all for happy endings and I would have loved to see an entire film of her moving in with them permanently going to school graduate whatever but that's just me. Like I know life is a little bit different and most of all that film like films need to convey something so sometimes there's no need for a happy ending just because One thing I might just add as well is that Baret did an amazing job of matching the story. So the story being about Koch's healing and growth and flourishing under Eileen and Sean with the structure of the film because the structure feels like it's a healing process, like it's a wound closing. did a really impressive job of marrying those two facets together. What, do you have any specific examples of that? Well there's a montage sequence which I think is especially important so it's the moment when she's, I think she's just arrived at the farm and you know following a few days she's very from Gare. She's very, very reserved, doesn't feel open or confident. And then over the course of the film, she begins to open up. And then there's a montage sequence with Eileen brushing her hair and counting to a hundred. And it's just beautiful. And then that's followed over the course of the film. Yeah, it's impossible for me not to become a little emotional when I talk about it because it's such... I remember exactly the scene you're talking about. It's followed by... Not necessarily a super cut, but I suppose a montage of all the things that they did together. Oh yeah, at the end. Twice, they do it twice. So they do it when there's the hair brushing sequence. where you see them cooking together and you see her, I don't know, vacuuming the floor. It's all like daily activities, but you feel a grounding of daily habits that she didn't have before because no one bothered spending time with her. In the last scene when she's running back to say goodbye to them, while she's running, it cuts to the same montage, just, I think, not necessarily sped up, but maybe slightly shorter. It's just great. The way it's portrayed it's so simple, linear. It's beautiful. It's an amazing film and I'm really glad that we got to see it when we did. I'm so glad that we got to participate in the Q&A as well because that's just an extra, you know. Just hearing what the actual creator had to say about it. It's just another level. Yes. Go see it, if you haven't seen it. Yeah, watch it multiple times. Cry your eyes out. Do we have anything else to say concerning Banshoon? I would say that the endings are both bittersweet, which is another way of framing the relation. But Uncanny and Cune feels more optimistic, I would say, whereas Late Spring feels more, not pessimistic, but realistic. It's sad. And even though it was a sadness that was inevitable, it was still heartbreaking to watch. are quite heartbreaking. Oh yeah. But they're beautiful because of this I think. Yes I agree. I don't necessarily know which one of the two is more optimistic or pessimistic. I think they're both quite realistic. What do you think? Yeah yeah I think so. Actually this theme of letting go of people or anyway not being able to be with the people you love for whatever reason it's one theme connects the two films. It's just that it's played out really differently because we have Noriko who's a grown woman and we have Kouch Which is 11. 9 I think. Yes, so very different characters, very different environments. Another thing, well, but we touched upon that already at the beginning, it's the feel of the films, it's really similar, but that's because one of the main themes of Ozu is the daily actions and the importance of daily actions, but also because it draws from Neurialism quite a bit, tea and all the pillow shots and things like that are I suppose that can be considered superficial when then approaching the film from a hyper coherent point of view become absolutely crucial when using a different type of narrative structure so either essentialist or boring from the near realist tradition. A special mention to my favorite bit ever which is when she goes back to her biological family's house and there's crumbles on the table because their house is quite messy and shabby and she kind of like sweeps them away. I love that was my favorite just bit in the entire film just this awareness of this is not what I want this is not me you know what I mean. I love it it's the moment in which you think okay she'll be alright even if she's not gonna go back to Eileen and development of identity. This concludes our episode on Onkhoi'in Cuan. Join us next week when we will discuss Federico Fellini's Eight and a Half and Tom Gormican's The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent starring Nicolas Cage as Nick Cage. Please check out our website at them to see the show notes of this episode and my review of Onkhoi'in Cuan.