Small Things Like These review: The quiet film that roared

It's the inevitable question that follows Oscar celebrations. What’s next? And after Cillian Murphy’s win for Oppenheimer earlier this year, everybody was asking how he'd follow up his typically subtle performance set against an epic canvas. The film version of Peaky Blinders was no secret, but surely there would be something before that …. There is. It's smaller and quieter, yet it packs just as big a punch as the role that defines his career so far.

Murphy goes back to familiar territory in Small Things Like These, but that's no indictment of either him or director Tim Mielants' film, an adaptation of Claire Keegan's novella. In a grey 1980s County Wexford town, he's Bill Furlong, fuel merchant and devoted father of five girls. By the standards of the community, he's done well for himself but what none of them know is where he started. His mother gave birth to him "out of wedlock", something not just frowned upon but openly condemned.

Looked after by the wealthy Mrs Wilson (Michelle Fairley) after his mother dies, Bill also receives a sound education, but memories of his mother never go away and they all come flooding back in a brief moment at the local convent. He hears weeping, discovers a girl hiding in the coal shed and then sees the terrified young women working in the laundry.

Magdalene Laundries and everything associated with them — the condemnation of unmarried mothers, separation from their babies, rigid morality, cruelty meted out by institutions founded on charity and understanding – has been well documented dramatically. The Madgalene Sisters (2002) and, more recently, Philomena (2013) all covered the same ground but in markedly different ways: so does this film but, of the three, it's probably the most powerful and much of that comes down to its tone. The quietness, the restraint and the small gestures and expressions that speak volumes are all wrapped in a grimy, sodden setting, turning what starts as a deeply personal story into a real gut-punch of a film.

It gifts Murphy a role that's tailor-made for an actor who can say so much with so little. One look in his eyes tells you everything. His Bill is self-contained, burying his feelings deep inside but his inherently compassionate nature is never far from the surface. His family is his number one priority, including his more pragmatic wife who feels he's something of a soft touch, but his discovery at the convent takes him to a point where he has to decide what is the right thing to do. It doesn't mean making a choice as such, but balancing his discovery with his responsibilities, and knowing all too well that there could be consequences.

It's an outstanding performance and one that's brilliantly matched by Emily Watson as Sister Mary, the most senior nun. The epitome of icy-eyed bureaucracy, she makes your blood run cold, casting a long, dark shadow over the film in one pivotal scene. Yet you know — and she senses — that it will take just one person to defy her and start unraveling her reign of fear.

A smaller, more modest film that could all too easily be overshadowed by the bigger hitters currently on cinema screens, Small Things Like These cries out to be seen.

Its impressive cast is perfectly matched by Mielants' skill as a filmmaker. In just over 90 minutes, he weaves a lean, tight story that both grips like a vice and inspires hope, even if the circumstances point to something darker. He and his Dutch cinematographer Frank van den Eeden create an oppressive atmosphere, one where secrets prevail over the truth and where the sun rarely pierces the gloom.

The economy and intensity of their approach mean that the ending catches you unawares. For a second or two, it’s as if the audience has been left hanging in mid-air, but it’s quickly apparent that the thinking behind it is something different.

Unexpected it may be, but it's completely in tune with the rest of the film — heartfelt and powerful. Anything less would have done the story — and the real people that inspired it — a disservice.

Small Things Like These is released in UK cinemas on November 1 and in the US on November 8.