THE QUIET ROOM

THE QUIET ROOM is an emotionally fulfilling drama revolving around a 7-year-old girl (played by Chloe and Phoebe Ferguson) and her relationship with her parents (Paul Blackwell and Celine O’Leary), whose marriage has been slowly and painfully unraveling. An only child of a working class couple, she narrates the film with voice-overs which reveal telling views of her interior world. How delicate and fragile her early years are is demonstrated through flashbacks, showing a happier time when she could crawl into bed, to snuggle between her parents, when a three-way family “hug” was a welcome routine.
However, as the parents start arguing, the girl stops talking. She says that she got mad at her parents and stopped, and now she can’t start again. This film skillfully deals with the tension between the child’s insecurities about her crumbling world and the parents’ frustrations about their daughter’s silence in the midst of their own problems. By remaining mute, the child is psychologically trying to divert attention from her parents’ arguing to herself, so that she can still get the attention she needs.
The parents decide on a trial separation. The girl decides to talk again. Hope is born for a reunited, loving family sometime in the future.
THE QUIET ROOM is skillfully acted, especially by sisters Chloe and Phoebe Ferguson, who play the girl at various ages. The film clearly demonstrates how desperately children need consistent love and affirmation from both parents and how devastating the effects of marital conflict can be on an innocent child. It shows how children are acutely perceptive to falsehood and to mixed emotional messages from adults.
THE QUIET ROOM is a sensitive look through a child’s mind and heart at a family which is struggling to survive, and to be healed from its wounds. It is a deeply moving, personal account of a subject most appropriate for adult viewers who want to anchor their understanding of their children’s emotional health.