The Phoenix Network:
 
 
About  |  Advertise
Adult  |  Moonsigns  |  Band Guide  |  Blogs  |  In Pictures
 
FIND MOVIES
Find a Movie
Movie List
Loading ...
or
Find Theaters and Movie Times
or
Search Movies

The Quiet

Idles in the dark
By JUSTINE ELIAS  |  August 30, 2006
2.0 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/

Related: Changing lives, Nothing pretty, Around the edges, More more >
  Topics: Reviews , Culture and Lifestyle, Health and Fitness, Hearing Loss and Deafness,  More more >
  • Share:
  • Share this entry with Facebook
  • Share this entry with Digg
  • Share this entry with Delicious
  • RSS feed
  • Email this article to a friend
  • Print this article
Comments

Today's Event Picks
[MUSIC] MANIA!
More Information
ARTICLES BY JUSTINE ELIAS
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   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.
  •   AMAZING GRACE  |  February 21, 2007
    Michael Apted’s stirring if conventional bio-pic of 18th-century British abolitionist William Wilberforce offers rum, funneled into anti-slavery PM William Pitt the Younger, and sugar, in the form of the hero’s adoring wife, Barbara.

 See all articles by: JUSTINE ELIAS

MOST POPULAR
RSS Feed of for the most popular articles
 Most Viewed   Most Emailed 



  |  Sign In  |  Register
 
thePhoenix.com:
Phoenix Media/Communications Group:
TODAY'S FEATURED ADVERTISERS
Copyright © 2009 The Phoenix Media/Communications Group