Working to Break the Silence in 'The Quiet'

The subject of bullying has been getting a lot of screen time this back-to-school season (see "How to Eat Fried Worms" or "The Ant Bully"). But none of these mine the dark realities of the subject in quite the same way as Jamie Babbit's new drama, "The Quiet." These girls' lives are cutthroat -- literally.

After her father dies, Dot (Camilla Belle), a deaf and mute teenager, moves in with her godparents, Paul and Olivia Deer (Martin Donovan and Edie Falco), and their daughter, Nina (Elisha Cuthbert). At her new high school, Dot is ridiculed by Nina and her cheerleader friends, while at home she discovers a host of startling secrets within a perfect-seeming family, from Olivia's drug addiction to Paul's sexual abuse of Nina. Nina winds up forging an alliance with Dot, bringing more secrets to light and ending Paul's abuse in a gruesome way.

Babbit, whose directorial credits include the 1999 comedy "But I'm a Cheerleader" and numerous episodes of TV's "Gilmore Girls," says that when she first saw the script, by Abdi Nazemian and Micah Schraft, she found "it explored things I was interested in. I was reading a book about sexual abuse at the time." When she sent the script to Cuthbert, the actress was determined to play Dot.

"I started reading it and I realized, what a great contrast to what I had been doing," Cuthbert says. "But Jamie asked me to consider Nina. I actually got more interested in Nina the second time I read it. Nina was the key to everyone's evolution."

Still, the 23-year-old Cuthbert is playing a character roughly the same age as her character on the TV thriller "24," where she plays the daughter of federal agent Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland. In "The Quiet," too, her defining role is as a daughter. "I definitely feel like this is the last time I can play 17," she says.

On the other hand, 17 is an age the thirty-something Babbit keeps returning to. She says she's drawn to stories about teenagers because "it's all about power, the power dynamic between girls that age."

As for the bullying, Babbit explains, "She [Nina] has so much anger in her life." The audience sees the source of that anger in Nina, but it's not clear why her best friend, Michelle (Katy Mixon), is also cruel to Dot. Babbit's explanation: "I think Michelle's problem is she's a lesbian, and she's in love with Nina. I don't know if she'll ever have the strength to come out to herself."

That would make Michelle the second gay cheerleader in Babbit's oeuvre ; Natasha Lyonne played a lesbian sent to "sexual redirection" camp in "But I'm a Cheerleader." What is it about cheerleaders? They are, the director says, the "archetype of a girl, what all high school girls are told to be like. I'm deconstructing that paradigm." As "The Quiet" shows, the lives of cheerleaders like Nina and Michelle, are more complicated than they appear.

With her film being released at the start of the school year, Babbit hopes its messages -- that people aren't always what they seem, that bullies harbor their own secrets -- will strike a chord in a season that celebrates fresh starts. She also wants the movie to comfort those silently enduring sexual abuse: "For families who are suffering from abuse, there's hope."

And if all else fails, Babbit jokes, "anything can be solved through murder."