Sentimental Sundance films are an annual tradition. They send wide-eyed distributors scurrying for winning bids on the festival’s feel-good hit of the year. CODA, the 2021 entry, meets the required criteria: it’s small, charming and performance-led. It also features major roles for deaf actors, which works both as the movie’s hook and its allure. Emilia Jones stars as Ruby Rossi, the youngest member of her family, but also the only one that can hear. Coming to the end of her high school career, Ruby is looking ahead to a life as a full-time interpreter for a family she loves but that has grown dependent on her. When she finally decides to pursue her love of singing, she gets a taste of what independence might be like.

CODA is an American remake of a French film (titled La Femilie Bélier), and the plot could not be any more conventional. That it stars deaf actors in major roles is perhaps its one singular trait. Oscar-winner Marlee Matlin plays Ruby’s mother Jackie, a former beauty queen who always expects her daughter to do what’s best for the family. Ruby’s father, Frank (Troy Kotsur) and older brother, Leo (Daniel Durant), run a fishing boat in their coastal Massachusetts town. Ruby is often helping out, being the helpful ears as the two men catch their day’s quota. As regulations begin to tighten and fees begin to rise on the local fishing community, Ruby’s assistance on the boat becomes even more integral, tying her further to her family’s business and away from what she truly wants.

This is a headache for her chorus teacher, Bernardo (Eugenio Derbez), who sees real talent in Ruby. Bernardo is a very classical movie archetype, a tough-but-fair instructor who suffers no fools and expects full commitment. He explains that he does not waste his time on people without talent, and pushes Ruby to audition for a place in the Berklee College of Music. Under Bernardo’s tutelage, Ruby goes from having no college ambition to imagining a life in Boston, where she can make a life for herself, out from under the shadow of her family’s disability. Pulled in opposite directions, a lot of her time becomes strictly demarcated between singing and the family business (the film’s script – written by director Sian Heder – is saddled with details regarding the bureaucratic processes of the Gloucester fishing board), and a decision must be made over which path her life will take.

CODA is an incredibly sweet movie, even if its tactics are saccharine, bordering on tacky. The script moves through its beats like textbook bullet points, crafting stakes from heavy-handed contrivances. All that said, I still found myself in enjoying it, falling into its comforting tale of family melodramedy. Ruby’s inability to indulge in her own teenage years (there’s a shaggy-haired boytoy she has a crush on played by Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, and a sex-crazy, comic relief bestie played by Amy Forsyth) is a common enough conceit, but Jones and the rest of the cast really make the emotions pop. It is going hard for the misty-eyed crowd, playing upon our heartstrings like a skilled marionette. You will know exactly what you’re getting from CODA, and sometimes that is exactly what you need.

 

Directed by Sian Heder