CODA’s deaf characters aren’t saints or victims – review

Dir: Sian Heder. Starring: Emilia Jones, Eugenio Derbez, Troy Kotsur, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Daniel Durant, Marlee Matlin. 15, 111 mins

CODA redefines the concept of the crowd-pleaser. Any impulse to pigeonhole it – as the uplifting drama about the hearing child of a deaf family, which walked away from the Sundance Film Festival with a record $25m acquisition deal – disintegrates the moment we meet Frank (Troy Kotsur) and Jackie (Marlee Matlin). They’re parents to Leo (Daniel Durant) and Ruby (Emilia Jones), the latter being the only hearing member of the Rossi clan and, therefore, their de facto interpreter. At a doctor’s appointment, she looks on with an all-too-recognisable look of teenage mortification as Frank asks her to sign an increasingly graphic list of medical ailments (the phrase “like a boiled lobster claw” makes an appearance).

Writer-director Sian Heder hasn’t thrust upon these characters the mantle of saints, role models, or victims – nor any of the familiar narratives hearing people create about those who are deaf in order, primarily, to feel better about themselves. Frank and Jackie are like so many other lovingly enervating parents found in coming-of-age indie cinema. They’re slightly hippie-ish, with a high sex drive and a tendency to embarrass potential boyfriends with their lurid frankness (here, the unlucky stooge is played by Ferdia Walsh-Peelo). That familiarity – and the familiarity of the film’s plot, which sees Ruby torn between her home life and her nascent dreams of a singing career – has led some critics to accuse CODA of lapsing into cliche. Heder’s work isn’t even totally original, since the film is actually a sly remake of a French drama titled La Famille Belier.

But CODA’s success, in all its tender-heartedness and unguarded humanity, provides a robust argument that cliches have only become cliches because we’re so used to viewing them through a single, limited perspective. Heder’s film is refreshing not only because it casts deaf actors as deaf characters, but in the sincerity of its storytelling. Deafness is both material and immaterial to CODA (which stands for Children of Deaf Adults) – Ruby’s path to musical success is threatened partially by her fears that leaving her family behind means stealing away one of their few concrete connections with hearing culture. She’s tethered, too, by her father’s fishing boat, the ever-dwindling source of their income. Corporate interest has stealthily taken hold of their sleepy Massachusetts town – now 60 per cent of their catch’s worth lines the pockets of middlemen. And within all that, she has to overcome her own self-consciousness to impress her school’s choirmaster, the demanding but ultimately visionary Bernardo (Eugenio Derbez).

Cinematographer Paula Huidobro pushes for delicacy over artistic flair – rightly so, since there’s no need for CODA to play theatrics with its camerawork. When Ruby’s in the outside world, there’s an openness to the way things are framed that feels both limitless and claustrophobic; when she’s home, there’s a glow that seems to emulate not from any particular light source but from the bodies that inhabit it. Every choice Heder makes is in service of the radiant performances – of the way Kotsur, Matlin, Jones and Durant perfect the dynamics of a family whose displays of affection consist mainly of teasing and name-calling.

When they’re being truly honest with each other, their gestures pour out with the force of a flash flood. There’s a similar catharsis to Jones’s onstage performances – when she sings Joni Mitchell’s work, she fully embodies its spirit, pushing through Ruby’s reservations into some yet untapped plane of emotional freedom. Her fluency in ASL is presented no differently from any other kind of bilingualism – it was her first language, and is still the one in which she feels the most comfortable expressing herself. It’s a small but meaningful choice on Heder’s part. She allows the film’s hearing audience to have some insight into the deaf experience on only one occasion. The sound cuts midway through one of Ruby’s performances. Frank and Jackie, picking up on the small, choked sobs and brushed-away tears of their fellow audience members, realise just how talented their daughter is. As with so much in CODA, it’s simple – but so beautifully executed.