CODA (Sundance2021) – Review by Leslie Combemale
CODA is about Ruby Rossi, a 17 year old hearing girl who helps her deaf family with their fishing business in Gloucester, Massachusetts. The story would be pretty pedestrian but that it centers entirely on a deaf family, often speaking in ASL, performed by deaf actors, with dialogue shown in subtitles to those who don’t know the language. It is writer/director Sian Heder’s dialogue, and the delivery by the actors, that raises CODA high above standard coming of age fare. This is not a film that makes the story about deafness itself.
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