CODA (Sian Heder)

[Philip J. Fry]

Trailer:
[

Show Spoiler

]

IMDb / wiki / RT / Metacritic

On Apple TV+

[Peng]

Watching this after the so-so Together Together may have me calibrate my Sundance-film expectation to appreciate it better, but this is still lovely, with outstanding performances by all the family members. Under its broad structure and cliche signifiers contain plenty of appealingly earnest moments and authentic emotions. In fact, this comes so close to transcend the Sundance template that one wishes it does away with the easy stacking-the-deck stuff that rings false altogether -- superfluous teen romance, school bullying that feels so overt for the film's more grounded tone, and especially the big turning point of that coast guard inspection, which feels so contrived in set-up and consequence as if designed solely to give this family the big, final dilemma.

Moments of insights about the deaf community are so piercing that I wish it foregrounds the viewpoints of the deaf family members more as well, even if Emilia Jones' star-making turn makes it captivating enough on a scene-by-scene basis for her more generic coming-of-age arc. Still, those moments accumulate enough throughout into sequences of startling truths, be it from the whole family as a unit (sound dropping out at a key sequence) or individual interactions (father hearing his daughter sing in his own way, mother recounting a concern when her daughter was born, brother anguished at the thought of being in his sister's path) that they bypass the creaky structure into something more earnest and alive, rather than rotely familiar. 7/10