The Quiet

Idles in the dark

By JUSTINE ELIAS | August 30, 2006

2.0 Stars

Deaf and mute since the age of seven, teenage foster kid Dot (Camilla Belle) is more than just the loner/loser of her upscale Connecticut high school; she’s a sounding board for all who imagine that she can’t hear their secrets. But this kid’s got a secret of her own — and it’s deeper than her gift for playing Beethoven piano sonatas by (inner) ear. She’s lodged at the unhappy Deer household, a permanently-under-renovation mansion presided over by a pill-addicted mother (Edie Falco) and an architect dad (Martin Donovan) who hugs his voluptuous cheerleader daughter, Nina (Elisha Cuthbert), far too close. Soon Nina’s suppressed rage turns to death threats, and Dot becomes the silent partner in a murder plot. (Cuthbert, after her damsel-in-distress predicaments on 24, displays real femme fatale fury here.) Despite some hilariously twisted high-school mean-girl dialogue, Jamie Babbit’s film wastes too much time idling in the dark and Ice Storm-y night.

On the Web
The Quiet's Web site: http://www.sonyclassics.com/thequiet/

Topics: Reviews , Culture and Lifestyle, Health and Fitness, Hearing Loss and Deafness, More

| More

Most Popular

The Current Issue

Table of Contents

Cover Archive

Masthead | Authors | Contact us

Blogs

Where To Follow Me
Talking Politics | March 24, 2013 at 11:09 AM

Mo Takes His Turn
March 21, 2013 at 12:59 PM

[Q&A] KMFDM's Sascha Konietzko on art, Columbine and having balls
On The Download | March 18, 2013 at 3:22 PM

See this film series: The Belmont World Film Series @ Studio Cinema in Belmont
Outside The Frame | March 18, 2013 at 11:00 AM

See this film: This is Spinal Tap [with post-film talk by expert from Acoustical Society of America] @ the Coolidge
March 17, 2013 at 12:00 PM

More Information

Watch the trailer for The Quiet (QuickTime)

ARTICLES BY JUSTINE ELIAS

JONATHAN HAYES KNOWS WHEREOF HE WHIFFS | April 19, 2011
Forensic scientists, bit players in crime fiction since the era of Sherlock Holmes, became bestseller material in the 1990s with Patricia Cornwell's cut-and-slice procedurals featuring medical examiner Kay Scarpetta.

PLAIN TALK | September 15, 2009
Jesse Sheidlower, an editor-at-large of the Oxford English Dictionary , an expert in slang, and the author of The F-Word , can't stop talking about fuck.

HARD TIMES | March 24, 2009
When last year the BBC interrupted its broadcast of Little Dorrit — which hinges on the downfall of a Bernie Madoff–like figure — for a tawdry true-crime documentary, thousands of viewers complained: don't leave us hanging!

BELLE DE NUIT | June 16, 2008
Belle is, as she introduces herself right up front, “a whore.” Or, if you please, “prostitute, call girl, escort, hooker, courtesan.”

OSS 17: LE CAIRE NID D'ESPIONS/OSS 117: CAIRO, NEST OF SPIES | May 14, 2008
Imagine a blithe, covertly bisexual James Bond swanning around pre-Suez Cairo in a send-up directed by the early Zucker brothers.