Her father stubs his cigarette out on his plate, drops the rhubarb Eibhlín gives him to take home and waits for someone else to pick it up. These relatives have more money, perhaps a reason for estrangement. Eibhlín is quietly thrilled to see Cáit again, the first time since she was a baby, so the families are clearly not close. The cinematography by Kate McCullough, with its emphasis on light and shadow, and the score by Stephen Rennicks are exceptional.Įibhlín and Seán have a handsome, light-filled house with land and a flourishing dairy farm. Cáit looks up from the back seat at the sun-dappled trees. Her father, Dan, drives her there in his bashed-up car, deep into the county towards the coast, mainly without speaking. Temporary salvation arrives with the summer holidays – it’s an unusually dry summer – when Cáit goes to stay with a cousin of her mother’s, Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley, pictured below), and her husband, Seán (Andrew Bennett), to ease the burden on Cáit’s mother and to give her parents one less mouth to feed. The kids' school lunch boxes are empty and the house is grubby, dank and joyless. Apparently friendless, she is withdrawn and alone in the midst of her large, impoverished Wexford family, where the feckless, permanently pissed-off dad (Michael Patric) has gambled away the heifer, the harassed mother (Kate Nic Chonaonaigh) is pregnant again, and they can’t afford to pay anyone to get the hay in. She’s bullied and slow at school and wets the bed at home, hiding under it in shame.

Set in 1981, the first scenes present nine-year-old Cáit (the marvellous Catherine Clinch, a 12-year-old newcomer) as more obviously unfortunate than in the book, perhaps to build up back-story. Much of the dialogue in Colm Bairéad’s beautiful, mainly Irish-language film, which is in many ways about the power of silence, is reproduced unchanged from Keegan's book.

Girl seance