This year's big winner at Sundance was Sian Heder's "CODA," a coming-of-age film about teenager Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones), the only hearing member in a deaf family. Her father Frank (Troy Kotsur), mother Jackie (Marlee Matlin), and older brother Leo (Daniel Durant) all depend on her to translate for them, and she expects to join the family fishing business after high school. However, after joining the school choir, the music teacher Mr. V. (Eugenio Derbez), encourages her to develop her talent for singing and audition for the Berklee College of Music. Inevitably, the pressures from her family and her desire to pursue her own dreams result in Ruby having to make some difficult choices.
"CODA," an acronym for "child of deaf adults," is an earnestly humane film that does the work of making its deaf characters much more well-rounded and emotionally complex than we see in most media. The parts of the film featuring them, and their struggles to keep their fishing operations afloat, are so much more compelling than Ruby's fairly rote transformation from insecure ugly duckling to songbird, and her twee romance with a classmate, Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo). I so enjoy that the scenes of Ruby with her family have rough edges and real texture to them, which makes the flatter, more glossy scenes at high school immediately seem more tedious and incongruous with the rest of the film.
Emilia Jones does a decent job of carrying "CODA," but the best performances come from the adults - Eugenio Derbez as the exuberant Mr. V., and Marlee Matlin delivering one of the best performances that I've ever seen from her as Ruby's loving mother. The deaf characters are so earthy, so funny, and so lived-in - their personalities and foibles come across so clearly. There are subtitles for the conversations that take place in sign language, but I think they're optional. The characters perfectly communicate their feelings even if you can't understand a word they're signing. "CODA" is very formulaic at times, and the filmmaking is too generic for my tastes, but there's no denying that this is a sweet little film that I hope finds its intended audience.
"Swan Song" is the latest from Todd Stephens, who returns to Sandusky, Ohio to relay the tale of the aged "Mister Pat" Pitsenbarger, based on a real local hairdresser and fixture of the gay community. Pat (Udo Kier) is gathering dust in a local senior home when he receives word that one of his old clients, the wealthy Rita Parker Sloan (Linda Evans) has died, and requested that he handle her hair for the funeral. This sends Pat on an odyssey across Sandusky to rediscover himself and reconnect to figures from his past. Along the way he meets his former protege Dee Dee (Jennifer Coolidge), Rita's grandson Dustin (Michael Urie), drag queen Miss Velma (Justin Lonesome), and his old friend Eunice (Ira Hawkins).
At first, "Swan Song" seems to be a small scale, comedic version of something like "Paris, Texas" or "Nebraska," where a man comes back to the remains of a life he abandoned long ago, to have an overdue reckoning with the ghosts of his past. However, the deeper into the story he goes, and the more details are revealed about Mr. Pat, the more poignant the character is revealed to be. It becomes apparent after a while that "Swan Song" isn't just paying homage to the figure of Mr. Pat, but the bygone era of LGBT culture that he represents. Pat being a gay hairdresser, one of the stock types of the '80s, is so perfect, and having him played by camp icon Udo Kier feels terribly appropriate.
Kier is wonderful as Mr. Pat, especially as he slowly regains the confidence to reconstruct the persona of the fabulous man he was in his youth. Stephens plays with his screen image and that of the long absent Linda Evans, not afraid of making them a little ridiculous, and a little grotesque when necessary. "Swan Song" feels like is occupies such a specific place, as a love letter to Sandusky and an attempt to acknowledge a certain type of friendship between gay men and straight women, and comes across as very honest and genuine in its aims. This one surprised me, and I'm glad I took the trouble to track it down.
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