The Quiet
The Quiet is a 2005 American psychological thriller film directed by Jamie Babbit, written by Abdi Nazemian and Micah Schraft, and starring Elisha Cuthbert, Camilla Belle, Martin Donovan, and Edie Falco. It focuses on a deaf-mute teenage orphan who is sent to live with her godparents. She soon becomes a sounding board for the family members, who confess their darkest secrets to her, including the father's ongoing sexual abuse of his daughter.
The second feature film by Babbit after the 1999 comedy But I'm a Cheerleader, The Quiet was shot in Austin, Texas in 2004, the first film by the University of Texas's Burnt Orange production company. Cuthbert served as an associate producer of the film. Its soundtrack features songs by Low, Cat Power, Le Tigre, and numerous Beethoven piano sonatas. The film premiered at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival before being acquired by Destination Films, which re-edited the film drastically and added voiceover narration before releasing it in the United States theatrically through Sony Pictures Classics in August 2006.
The film was a box-office flop, but it found bigger commercial success in DVD markets. Many critics at the time of its release dismissed it as sleazy, exploitative, and difficult to watch, with several noting that it was too serious to be satire, yet too campy to be taken seriously. In the years since its release, the film has been analyzed by writers and critics as an example of a modern suburban gothic horror film.
Plot
Following the accidental death of her deaf father, Dot, an orphaned teenager who is also deaf-mute, is sent to live in Meriden, Connecticut, with her upper-class godparents, Paul and Olivia Deer, and their teenage daughter, Nina. Dot and Nina had been friends in childhood, before Dot lost her hearing as a result of a medical condition. The aloof Nina resents Dot's presence in the home and insults her repeatedly. Meanwhile, Dot observes that Olivia, an unfulfilled interior designer who was close friends with Dot's mother, is an alcoholic with a prescription drug addiction. Late one night, while returning to her bedroom, Dot observes Paul raping Nina in her bedroom, unbeknownst to them. It becomes clear that Paul has been sexually abusing his daughter for years.At school, Dot is a social outcast, though Connor, a basketball player, takes an interest in her, much to the chagrin of Nina's abrasive friend, Michelle, who is pursuing him. One afternoon, Nina returns home early from cheerleading practice and overhears Dot playing Beethoven on the family's piano. When one of the strings breaks, Nina hears Dot swear loudly, before vocally harmonizing with the strings as she tunes them. Realizing Dot is neither deaf nor mute, Nina withholds her knowledge of this. At lunch the next day, acting under the guise that Dot cannot hear, Nina assays her by confessing her hatred of her father, and details her plan to murder him.
That evening, Dot goes on a date with Connor, who is able to communicate with her by lip reading. Dot returns home to find Paul and Nina in bed together, and deliberately breaks a vase in the hallway, interrupting; Nina realizes the action signifies Dot's alliance with her. Later, Dot comforts Nina in her bedroom as she cries herself to sleep. The following night, after a basketball game, Connor confides numerous personal secrets to Dot, including his attention deficit disorder and his chronic masturbation. The two proceed to have sex in the school swimming pool. Meanwhile, Nina returns home from the game and is visited by Paul in her bedroom while she irons her cheerleading uniform. Mustering the courage to proceed with the murder, Nina tells him to close his eyes, and that she has a secret to show him; she proceeds to approach him with the hot iron to burn his face, but is interrupted when Dot returns home. Nina puts the iron down, and instead lies to her father that she is pregnant with his child and needs a thousand dollars for an abortion. He agrees to give Nina the money the next day.
Nina and Dot prepare to attend the school's spring dance the following night. While getting ready, Nina tells Dot she is going to kill Paul that night and run away with the abortion money he is giving her. She explains that she will find work as a stripper, believing she can become famous "like Courtney Love." Before the girls depart for the dance, Paul confronts Nina after finding tampons in her purse, and accuses her of lying about the pregnancy. Meanwhile, Dot, who is playing "Moonlight Sonata" downstairs, hears the argument. The confrontation becomes violent, and eventually descends into a rape before Dot comes to Nina's defense, strangling Paul to death with a piano wire. Olivia, in a drug-induced stupor, stumbles upon the scene, unfazed by her husband's corpse, but amazed by the revelation that Dot can hear.
Michelle arrives at the house to pick Nina and Dot up. The two quickly change their dresses, which are soaked in blood, and leave. At the dance, Dot reveals to Connor that she can hear and speak; angered by her deception, he storms away. Nina and Dot leave the dance, and walk to a riverbank in the woods, where they bury a backpack containing their blood-soaked clothing. Nina asks Dot why she pretended to be deaf-mute. Dot explains that, after her mother died during her childhood, she stopped speaking and began communicating only with sign language, as it made her feel closer to her father. When the girls return home, they find police cars at the house, and Olivia turning herself in for Paul's murder. Olivia apologizes to her daughter, and atones for having allowed Paul's sexual abuse of Nina go ignored. The following morning, Nina and Dot sit together and play piano, freed from their respective fathers.
Cast
Production
Casting
After appearing in The Girl Next Door, Cuthbert wanted to "not just... play the hot girl in the movie, it kills me." She had just finished the House of Wax and "was ready to do something that was definitely more character-driven." She read the Sundance workshop script by writers Abdi Nazemian and Micah Shraft, who had not previously made a feature film, and became an associate producer for the film, originally to be titled Dot.Cuthbert had initially wanted to play the role of the silent Dot, but director Jamie Babbit instead cast Belle in that part after Thora Birch dropped out of the project. Babbit reasoned that "To me, Dot has to be someone you could believe would be invisible in high school. You look at Elisha, this beautiful woman with the most perfect body you've ever seen and you think, there's no high school in America where this girl could be invisible. No matter how much hair and makeup I do, it's not going to happen." Cuthbert ultimately agreed to take the role, though she initially found it difficult to connect with: "I had a healthy childhood. That was a conflict for me because I had nothing to draw on for this character. Everything about this character made no sense in some ways. Everything about me wanted to defend myself and stand up for myself, but I couldn't do that for the character because this is all she knows. It was challenging."
Belle's role as Dot was a departure from previous roles and the film was released around the same time as two other indie films starring Belle, The Ballad of Jack and Rose and The Chumscrubber. Belle learned sign language and classical piano for the role, and wore no makeup for the part. She said of her part that "It was a lonely time 'cause she is a very lonely, depressing character." Cuthbert said that acting her part was complicated by Belle "not doing a whole lot in the movie, as far as dialogue goes – it was difficult, because we had to find the right timing and the beats."
The actors were brought together before filming commenced to go through ideas relating to the film, in order that they were familiar with the long-term situation of the characters. Cuthbert spoke to psychiatrists about sexual abuse, and the cast read articles about women who had been sexually abused.
Filming
The film was shot during September and October 2004 in Austin, Texas, and was produced by the University of Texas' Burnt Orange productions as their first feature. It was made for approximately $1 million, funded by the University of Texas Film Institute. Although the film is set in suburban Connecticut, Bowie High School in Austin was the principal filming location. A total of 36 University of Texas students worked on the film.The film was shot in high-definition video. Variety said that " M. David Mullen's high-definition, widescreen camerawork supplies a lucid, moody look, matched by Jeff Rona's brooding score." MSNBC's Christy Lemire noted that "Every frame of The Quiet, with its overly styled blue-gray tint and hazy interiors, calls to mind 9½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction or Unfaithful." Metroactive saw that "the purplish blues are deeply saturated for such a cost-effective medium, and the color is never milky or streaky. At times, Mullen and Babbit overdo the murk." IndieWire agreed, noting that the "use of smoke to mask the use of high-def video... results in laughably inexplicable smoky interiors lit like a high school production of Les Miserables." SF Stations Mel Valentin argued that Babbit effectively exaggerated the limitations of the budget and using HD video: "the video artifacts, lighting, night-time shooting, and sparse sets end up creating an oneiric, fairy-tale quality that helps to balances out the undercurrent of violence that permeates the characters’ actions."
The scene where Nina's father Paul attacks her was notably difficult to film, because Cuthbert was genuinely hurt by Donovan, who was "very method" during filming, and Babbit was caught between wanting to protect her and the need for Cuthbert "to go to a scary place." Cuthbert said that playing a victim was hard for her, and that "there were moments when I would go to the bathroom and bawl."