![]() ![]() Working from her own adapted screenplay, Heder establishes the dynamic between Ruby and her family - the push-pull of affection and aggravation, the blurring line between closeness and codependency - in a few crisp, inviting early scenes. Though her ability to hear sets her apart from her parents and sibling, the four function as a unit Ruby has been communicating in ASL since before she could speak, and acts as an interpreter for the other Rossis - their liaison to the hearing world. ![]() Ruby Rossi lives with mom Jackie (Marlee Matlin), dad Frank (Troy Kotsur) and big brother Leo (Daniel Durant) - all three deaf - in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where she toggles tirelessly between school and her job as a deck hand on the family’s fishing boat. CODA is an honest crowd-pleaser - one that gently charms, rather than claws or cloys, its way under your skin. (Think a deaf spin on Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace and Sidney Lumet’s Running on Empty, passed through a John Hughes filter, or tossed into a blender with recent Netflix teen movies like The Half of It.) But the unfussy warmth and feeling of the performances and direction should overcome even the staunchest resistance. There’s a lot of plot, and tones that should, in theory, clash. Revolving around 17-year-old Ruby (Emilia Jones) and the tensions that arise when her passion for music pulls her away from her deaf parents and brother, CODA at times teeters toward unwieldiness. Though all the expected plot points are present and accounted for - the school concert and conservatory audition, the first kiss, fights and heart-to-hearts - the filmmaker (whose debut feature, Tallulah, premiered at Sundance 2016) stages them with uncommon delicacy, flaunting a finely tuned sense of when to push, how much and when to pull back. But one of writer-director Sian Heder’s most impressive feats is how shrewdly she handles the more familiar elements. CODA‘s focus on the fraught ties between deaf and hearing communities gives it a foundation of freshness. That’s not to say the film offers nothing new. Dramatic Competition)Ĭast: Emilia Jones, Troy Kotsur, Marlee Matlin, Daniel Durant, Eugenio Derbez, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Amy Forsyth ![]()
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