A couple of months ago, Madison had the privilege to speak to Irish director Colm Bairéad about his debut feature The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin) – set to hit cinemas in a week’s time on September 8th.
The film follows nine year old Cait, who has been sent away from her impoverished family for the summer – after her mother falls pregnant again – to live with a middle-aged couple, who show her a version of love and family that she’s not before experienced. Told through a skilful control over dialogue and silence, and with delicate cinematography, this film offers a visceral portrait of the young girl.
Madison Stephens: Was your passion for film something you pursued at university, and how did you make your first steps into the industry and develop your cinematic style?
Colm Bairéad: I went to film school in Ireland – and prior to that, I had been dabbling with short-film making with friends and cousins and stuff, with whatever we could get our hands on – like a camcorder or anything that could record images. We’d go out and shoot films on the weekend, and try to piece them together.
So then I went to film school, and after that it was the case of applying for the various short film schemes that were available through state funding. Because I am an Irish speaker, and there were short film schemes that were particularly focussed on Irish language shorts, I used to apply for those quite a bit because it felt very personal to me. So, as it happens, all my of short films prior top this film have always been in the Irish language. It felt like a natural progression then, moving onto an Irish feature film.
MS: Absolutely!
I attended the Saturday screening, and I didn’t know you’d be speaking afterwards, but I listened to your brief interview at the Hayden Orpheum and was really interested in how you said the Irish language is kind of being taken over by the English language. I loved the duality in the film of having both of them at the same time. Is that something you’ve done in your short films as well?
CB: Yeah, yeah. I have sort of a hang up about, like, I don’t like the idea of an Irish language film where everyone’s speaking Irish in Dublin for no reason; where it doesn’t make sense for the social reality of the languages in Ireland. So, I tend to like my Irish language films to include English in some way. That’s reflective of my own lived experience: I was raised in a bilingual household, so my dad spoke Irish to me all the time, and my mum spoke English. I kind of like to keep the two there and to have that texture, because otherwise if it’s all in Irish for no particular reason, it feels like a political statement of sorts. And that doesn’t interest me at all. I’m just interested in having the two languages reflected.
MS: Yeah! It’s such a beautiful feature film and I was interested in your choices to make an adaptation. Is there something in particular that drew you to Claire Keegan’s Foster or were you already looking for something to adapt? Do you bring in any new story beats, or did you translate it fairly word for word – or, not ‘word for word’ but, you know, ‘beat for beat’?
CB: Yeah, so at the time I was actively looking for material. And, this film was made as part of a particular scheme called Cine4, which is a scheme that was set up about 5 years ago to produce Irish language feature films. So, because I’d done all these short films I was very determined to get one of these feature films, because it felt like a natural progression in terms of my career and what I had done up until that point.
I was actively looking for material, and then I read an article in the Irish Times which was a list of the 10 best works of literature in Ireland of the 21st century by female authors. For some reason, Foster by Claire Keegan jumped out at me from that list, and I sought the book out and I just fell in love with it.
It moved me greatly, and I could just see it as a film. Like, as I was reading it, it was taking shape in my mind as a film. However, to answer your question to beats and so forth, I did realise by the end – having read it and loving it deeply – I did realise there wasn’t quite enough there to suit the demands of a three act feature film structure. So, I did have to invent an opening act for the film to go with it, because the original starts with girl in the car on the way to the Cinnsealachs. And because the original is written in the first person from the girl’s point of view, she does mention things over the course of the summer, like memories related to her past. So they were little morsels that I was seizing upon, and I was able to extract and build sequences and scenes for the opening act that were still true for Claire Keegan’s vision for the world and for the character.
MS: That’s great. I was so captured by the pacing of the film. I think the slowness, it allows the audience to be more of an active participant because you’re imagining that unspoken dialogue and you’re so with her perspective. Hearing you say that it’s written first person, makes a lot of sense because the things that she doesn’t know, we’re also unsure about. I was curious about how much time you spent in the screenwriting process and is that something you like to spend a long period in; writing out big print that’s very detailed? Or [do] you like to get to the making part of it more?
CB: I love all elements of it, all stages of it. I don’t think I luxuriate in the process of writing, for the sake of it, but I suppose, the question of the space in the film, or the pace: I was certainly aware of that as I was writing the script. That’s not to say that the descriptive passages in the script were necessarily excessive.
There were certain things that I knew that I needed to focus on: the whole question of food, for instance, was very important in the film and that theme of sustenance. It’s a film about care and attention and love and sustenance is kind of part of that. She comes from a home where she’s not getting enough physical sustenance or emotional sustenance, and she goes to a place where she suddenly gets both of these things. And even in the original story by Claire Keegan which is called Foster, the word ‘foster’ itself, in old English, means ‘to feed’ or ‘to nourish’. I think even Claire Keegan herself was very aware of the metaphorical importance of food and the notion of sustenance in the work. Things like that – that kind of detail – I was very careful about.
The conventional wisdom in screenwriting is that one page of script equals one minute of screen time, whereas I knew my script would be shorter, but that the film would be longer – because I knew I didn’t want to have really long descriptive passages, but I still knew that the film would have a certain pace. The film would end up being like 90 minutes, whereas the script was about 81 pages or something like that. So there was definitely an understanding that things would be given more room to breathe.
MS: That’s great. I think it’s such a privilege knowing you can direct what you write, that you can give it that sort of space when you turn it into the film. I know as a writer myself – and especially in uni degrees – we’re writing stuff and trying to get that tone across, but sometimes it can be hard to convey that all on the page.
I wanted to speak briefly about the ending. I heard you speak about it after the Sydney Film Festival viewing, and I really liked what you said about it how the ending is a tragic moment for Cait’s father; that seeing her having created this father’s bond with someone else. I was curious about how you like to end stories. Do you like to know where your characters are going to go next, or is it more about emotional closure than plot closure, for you?
CB: I’m not necessarily interested in answering where the characters go next. I do like to leave room for the audience to engage with that question. There’s something interesting Claire Keegan says about writing; Claire who wrote Foster from which our film is based. She talks about how she believes that the reader finishes the work; that she doesn’t actually finish it. And that’s something that I find really intriguing, and I think that the films that I really connect with are films that carry that notion with them.
I think our film – I hope our film -suits that description as well, and that it leaves you with a lot of questions. I mean, it should leave you with certain certainties as well, in that I hope it feels like it’s a portrait of a girl who has been altered by the experience that she’s had over the course of the summer. But then, in terms of the specifics of how her life might pan out from that point onwards, that’s not my place to say. I completely want to hand that over to the audience and for them to do with that what they will. And I think it’s an interesting way of judging whether people are pessimists or optimists, you know, asking them what way they feel the fit or the characters might have gone post credits. If it’s a question for me, it’s a question of leaving space for the audience.
MS: The visuals of the whole film; the cinematography and the production design I was really into. I thought it was so beautiful. I’m curious: do you usually work with the same people or do you cast your crew as well?
CB: In this instance, I had never worked with the Director of Photography (Kate McCullough) before, or the production designer (Emma Lowney) or the composer (Stephen Rennicks). The editor (John Murphy) I know very well. But then, say the DOP Kate McCullough: she’s a genius! She shot Normal people the TV series, and she’s one of our great cinematographers in Ireland. I had never worked with her and I was familiar with her work, and I just had this sense as I was writing the script: I just kept thinking about her.
And we met, and we have similar personalities and had a very shared sensibility about things, and a nice way of challenging each other. I just knew that my original instinct was correct, and she was the person to do it. And she will absolutely be my first choice going forwards now, in terms of any other films. She feels like a sort of creative soulmate at this point.
MS: Yeah! For the last question, this is one we often ask at Film in Revolt: what is a film from your youth that has had a big impact on you, even if it’s not creatively and it’s just something that’s moved you. Is there anything specific that stands out?
CB: There’s kind of a bunch of them. My dad introduced me to film, when he first bought us a VCR player. He kind of curated our introduction: so, he started off with silent movies and worked his way up through film noir and musicals, and then into world cinema like Kurosawa and this sort of stuff.
There is a particular Fellini film that I remember he showed to us, and that’s a film about childhood actually and it’s called Amarcord, which means “I remember” in Italian. It’s a semi autobiographical piece by Fellini, and I just remember the colour of it, and the understanding of family and of the place, that I found very moving – even as a very young person. So that’s certainly one that stands out in terms of my childhood memories.
MS: Yeah wow I’ll have to watch it – I love a family drama! Definitely my favourite genre.
Well, thank you so much for talking with me today. I really appreciate it. And the film is so beautiful.
I’m so glad it’s had success – it really deserves it all.
The Quiet Girl will be showing in cinemas from September 8th.