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The Quiet is directed by relative newcomer Jamie Babbit,
whose first feature film But
I’m a Cheerleader gathered critical attention playing at Toronto, Sundance,
and other notable festivals. Babbit’s first film became an instant cult camp classic.
The Quiet is set among a squad of high-school cheerleaders, and contrasts the
shallow, bitchy teenagers’ subculture with the far more perverse, yet equally shallow
world of adults. Into this stylized suburban Connecticut nightmare arrives an orphaned
teenager, the deaf-mute Dot (Camilla Belle).
Despite Babbit’s seeming preoccupation with cheerleaders (featured
in her first two feature films in a row) and with careful attention to a sensuous and
compassionate lesbian subtext, The Quiet never seems to make up its mind – is
it perverse-ironic, it is serious, is it camp? For example, the film is shot in
high-definition, creating a notably crisp look. And yet, director of photography David
Mullen frequently fills indoor and after-dark scenes with smoke – very moody, very
suggestive, and yet often leaving the sloppy impression of a technical after-effect rather
than a deliberately sought-after aesthetic effect.
Similarly, Dot is frequently shot playing a piano in her adopted
parents’ bare dining room. The film offers the alibi that Dot’s adopted mother
Olivia (Edie Falco, in a quirky portrayal of a pill-popping mom) is in the middle of a
compulsive-obsessive interior-redesigning rage. Yet, the set comes across as a found
backdrop, adopted because of its found-object charm. If Dot is deaf, why is she so
frequently shown playing Beethoven so emotively on the piano? Is this heavy-handed
foreshadowing or camp overstatement? And how come no one ever hears dad having sex with
his daughter Nina (Elisha Cuthbert) downstairs, while Dot plays away and mother Olivia
"pretends" to hear nothing, upstairs or downstairs? Is there a reason Olivia
looks like Annie "Sweet Dreams Are Made of This" Lennox?
The Quiet seems not so much to want it both ways, but rather as
unwilling to commit itself one way or the other. It takes on directly poignantly explosive
subject matter, the many kept open secrets that bind family and social circles together.
It approaches father-daughter incest in a refreshingly direct manner. The parallel of
father-daughter secrets, between Nina and her father Paul (Martin Donovan), and Dot and
her father (dead more than a decade before the start of the plot), could offer a
potentially powerful narrative touch. The multiple reversals of protector/persecutor roles
is rife with dramatic possibility. And yet, in the most inappropriate moments, the film
slides into archly dark humor, even bombast. The prompted urges to laugh tend less to
defuse the sting and more to render banal.
That said, the ensemble cast is thoroughly enjoyable to watch. As
Dot’s would-be nemesis and incest victim Elisha Cuthbert as Nina is intriguing. As
Nina and Dot’s relationship changes, both appear more radiant, almost a guilty
viewer’s pleasure – as they come to terms with each other, they take on a kind
of lesbian love halo glow. Shawn Ashmore as Connor works well as a love object, but is not
quite plausible as a star player on the nearly all-white high-school basketball team. Katy
Mixon, as Nina’s poison-tongued best friend Michelle and chief slut among the
cheerleaders is both easy to hate and hard not to feel sorry for. What starts out
promisingly enough as a parody of a suburban Connecticut bedroom community, flirts with
becoming a serious drama, perhaps high-brow cinema, ends up more like an after-school
social issues drama. Jamie Babbit continues to show great promise as a director, and The
Quiet may prove an interesting apprentice piece for this director.
- Les Wright
