The Quiet, a new thriller/perversion/coming-of-age movie by director Jamie Babbit, is about the sleaziest film I have seen since Sin City. And that’s not meant to be a criticism. The movie drips with infection and disease, both mental and physical. To give you a little perspective here, I have a client who likes to be chained to the base of my toilet, drenched with my golden juices and then left there while I work with other clients. That’s the kind of perversion I deal with on an hourly basis. So you get a clear picture? Well The Quiet actually had me feeling uncomfortable with the subject matter.
The Quiet is about deaf Dot (Camilla Belle), who goes to live with the most dysfunctional family ever. There’s the mom, played with total zonked out abandon by Edie Falco. There’s dad, the too-good-to-be-true type played by Martin Donovan, and most importantly, we have daughter Nina as brought to you by Elisha Cuthbert.
Dot isn’t exactly greeted warmly by Nina and their antagonistic relationship is one of the things that sets The Quiet apart from more trashy exploitation fair. Nina is mortified that Dot has moved in with her family. Dot is tall, goonish, and dresses like a boy. Furthermore, her hearing disability makes her an easy mark for ridicule at their high school. Because of this Nina does whatever she can to make Dot feel like an unwanted stray… an intruder. At least until Dot learns Nina’s little secret and Nina learns Dot’s.
I am not about to give anything away, but one secret will be pretty easy for you to figure out while the other will make you uncomfortable next time you think about sex.
Babbit has had her hand in a fair share of geek-lauded television including Alias, Gilmore Girls and Wonderfalls. I never saw But I’m A Cheerleader, Babbit’s only other major release, but The Quiet bears the focus on characterization as her television work. Because of that, she manages to coax some incredible performances out of her young cast. Equally impressive are the adults in the movie. Edie Falco in particular, who plays a pill popper who ignores her family as it crumbles around her, is amazing in her role. I swear, she actually seemed stoned for most of the running time, and she has one humiliating scene with Donovan that was an amazement of audacity and transparency.
The chemistry between Belle and Cuthbert is crucial to the success of the movie, and the young actresses really come to inhabit their roles. I have only seen Belle in the turgid remake of When a Stranger Calls this year, and I was unimpressed. But whatever misconceptions I had about here are no gone. It’s always difficult when a really beautiful woman has to play a really dorky, damaged (and ugly) girl. But Belle fills the skin of her character and when played against the more garish character of Nina and her friends, it’s easy to see why Dot would be the one who is disregarded. Nina on the other hand is the antithesis of Dot’s reserved dorkiness. Cuthbert get’s to play the popular girl with a damaged psyche. Her performance is brave, funny, and more than a little subversive. Having only experienced Cuthbert as Jack Bauer’s imperiled daughter, her performance in this surprised me.
Many people are going to say that the movie is sleazy just to be sleazy, but I would disagree. The Quiet functions best when the main characters are pulled so far into the muck of their lives and all they have is each other to help them get out. And by the end of their journey together (and the start of a new one), you see that their reliance is the only worthy thing either of them have.
