Last night I saw a movie entitled Quiet (2005) which starred Elisha Cuthbert, Camilla Belle and Edie Falco. When I saw the list of actresses in the film, I was excited and hoping for something really good. Instead, I was totally disgusted after watching the film. Quiet deals primarily with sexual abuse and incest. It’s very dark and depressing and it makes the audience uncomfortable. It would be different if there were some good performances and some characters that we can relate to, but there are not.

WARNING: THIS REVIEW HAS SPOILERS
Dot (Camilla Belle) moved in with the Deers after the tragic death of her father. They are a middle class family, and while they don’t make Dot feel totally unwelcome, they don’t do anything to make her feel particularly at ease. Dot lost her hearing when she was 7, and she also stopped talking. Paul Deer (Martin Donovan) and Olivia Deer (Edie Falco) are raising their what seems to be spoiled teenage daughter Nina (Cuthbert). Nina is rude and mean to Dot and becomes jealous when she moves in with her family. We soon find out that Nina has bigger problems than Dot.

Paul Deer molests his daughter every night. Nina has a common reaction to his abuse. She enjoys the attention but she hates knowing what her father is doing to her. She doesn’t see other boys and she doesn’t like to talk about sex with her friends. Olivia knows this is going on, but she medicates herself with pills so that she doesn’t have to deal with the truth.

Dot has a sign language interpreter to translate for her at her school. She attracts the most popular boy there, Connor (Shawn Ashmore), because he finds the fact that she doesn’t hear or talk intriguing. One night he pours his entire soul out to her, and tells her everything he does, including masturbating stories and other very personal information. The two of them have sex at the pool in the gym.

We find out soon enough that Dot can, indeed, hear. Most importantly, she hears what goes on in the Deer household. I won’t spoil the end but I will say that Dot and Nina do eventually begin to like one another and become friends. Both are absolutely disgusted with Paul Deer and his ‘sickness.’

Like I said, I won’t spoil the end because I’ve already told enough about this film. The problem with the entire film is, the viewer just doesn’t care. Elisha Cuthbert puts no effort or soul into her performance. Although we are shocked that someone so young has to put up with such horrid sexual abuse, we cannot connect to Nina at all. She is absolutely unlikable. I felt the same way about Dot. For most of the movie, she just looks and stares at people when they talk to her. She is boring and unappealing. There are little tirades when she narrates what’s happened to her in her lifetime, and they are monotone and very dramatic. She gives little snippets of advice which sound like they’ve been taken from a fortune cookie. My big question would be, why did she have sex with the kid by the pool?? What was the reason? We don’t care about her enough to know why she would do such a thing, and consequently, it’s really just no big deal.

Edie Falco was shocking in her role as Olivia. I am used to Mrs. Soprano and her feistiness and talent for current fashion and hairstyles. In Quiet, Falco looks like she’s turned seventy years old. Her hair style is a buzz cut and I gotta say, Carmella ain’t looking so good. She did take her clothes off and appear naked (aside from underwear) at one point, and she does have a very good body. That hair and face though.. not so good.

At one point Nina asks Dot why she pretends she can’t hear and we never do get a straight answer. I guess I don’t ‘get’ the subtleties of Quiet, or the reasons behind the motivation of the characters. I didn’t find it the least bit entertaining, and I found the performances dull and lifeless. This is a movie about a very serious subject, and I wouldn’t recommend that children of any age watch this.

2 stars



Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age