Directed by Sian Heder | Written by Heder, based on the film La Famille Bélier, written by Victoria Bedos, Stanislas Carré de Malberg, Éric Lartigau, and Thomas Bidegain | 111 min | Apple TV + | ▲▲▲▲△
CODA is an acronym, Child Of Deaf Adults. That’s teenager Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones) who in her family of fishers outside Boston is the only hearing individual. The Rossis are Mom, Jackie (Marlee Matlin), Dad, Frank (Troy Kotsur), and older brother, Leo (Daniel Durant). They work on their own trawler, with Ruby serving as interpreter for the family when dealing with the fisheries regulators, business matters, and general life needs.
At school Ruby has a pal, Gertie (Amy Forsyth), a crush, Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), and a secret hobby, singing. She joins choir and manages to get over herself long enough to impress her teacher, Mr Villalobos (Eugenio Derbez, terrific), who encourages her to commit herself and apply to the Berklee College of Music.
Given her important role in her family, you can see how Ruby’s dream could cause trouble at home where everyone is so reliant on her as a liaison with the rest of the world. Her roles becomes especially important when changes on the wharf forces the Rossis to sell their fish directly to their customers, thereby increasing their profit but also taking on a lot more work. All this while Ruby fosters her dreams of music school with Mr V and makes time with Miles.
CODA strummed me like a harp. It’s been a minute since we’ve seen a heartfelt family drama as effective as this one. It’s undeniably orchestrated to follow a formula but playing its notes so well you can hardly fault the symphony.
Whatever Matlin is eating, I want some of it: It’s been more than 35 years since her Oscar-winning role in Children Of A Lesser God yet she’s mostly unchanged and just as compelling a performer as ever. She’s having a blast with Kotsur, their physical chemistry a constant embarrassment to Ruby.
Emilia Jones is the daughter of 1980s Welsh choral star Aled Jones of “Walking On The Air” fame, so comes to music honestly. Here she nails the role in an American accent, having spent months training to learn American sign language and how to work on a fishing boat. She’s entirely credible as a teen who had to grow up early to take on the responsibility with the family while also still cooking more than a little anxiety around her talent with song. And you might recognize Walsh-Peelo as the Irish kid with dreams of being in a band in the amazing Sing Street, one of 2016’s best films.
The quality casting goes a long way to making the story work, as does the importance of representation in those key roles, but it’s the balance of tone that’s the key to the movie’s masterly emotional manipulations — and I say that as a compliment.
The coming-of-age elements hook us in, but it’s the family dynamics — completely separate from the challenges of characters hearing or not hearing — that bring a lot of humour to the piece, essential in getting us invested before the later dramatics. You may not laugh at the line, “You know why God made farts smell? So deaf people could enjoy them, too,” but I sure did.
CODA mostly steers clear from a real sense of social realism. I’m just remembering the kind of grit a movie set in a very similar environment, Manchester by the Sea, had in spades, which is mostly absent here — but CODA still smartly, and lightly, tells a story with relatable, believable people where a disability is a fact of life. It’s a cultural signifier but not a defining characteristic.
CODA also delivers the rare magic of a movie where its power is in its familiarity. It doesn’t hold a lot of surprises but it still manages to move you.
It also lends more credence to something I’ve noticed lately — that Joni Mitchell and maybe her most well-known song, “Both Sides Now,” are having a cultural moment.
