Direction: Sian Heder
Country: USA
Tallulah’s director Sian Heder returns to feature film - her second - with CODA, a musical coming-of-age drama that may offer you some coziness but never reaches special places. This American remake of Éric Lartigau’s French film La Famille Belier is an eager-to-please potpourri that sacrifices heart and substance for a variety of limp plot choices.
The story is centered on teenage Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones), the only one in her united family of fishermen who can hear. Her presence became indispensable to her parents - Frank (Troy Kotsur) and Jackie (Marlee Matlin) - as a sign language translator but her passion and gift for singing is spotted by a supportive yet demanding music teacher, Bernardo Villalobos (Eugenio Derbez), who envisages her in Boston’s Berklee School of Music alongside her crush, Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo). The dilemma of staying with the family or leaving them is already complex, but now imagine how hard would be to explain to deaf people your fascination for music.
The idea of bringing this contrast between music and deafness may look interesting at first, and even develops with a bawdy sense of humor, but then whatever was charming in the course of action vanishes in a glimpse of an eye in consequence of the incremental addition of clichéd subplots that mostly annoy rather than entertain.
Heder made the right move by hiring culturally deaf actors but, in the end, CODA succumbs to the artificial sheen that comes in the guise of a feel-good impression. Lamentably, only the humorous moments prevail.
