In the delightful audience-pleaser CODA, teenager Ruby (Emilia Jones) is the only hearing member of her family. CODA stands for Child of Deaf Adults. Her dad (Troy Kotsur), mom (Oscar-winner Marlee Matlin) and older brother Leo (Daniel Durant), all deaf, operate a New England fishing trawler. Ruby is a gifted singer with an opportunity to attend an elite music school, but her family depends on her helping the business.
Can Ruby stay true to her family and reach her dream? This could be the premise for a hackneyed movie, but CODA is anything but trite. My own taste in movies runs so dark that I sometimes forget that a film can be heartwarming without being corny. CODA achieves that.
CODA’s success results from the textured supporting characters and complicated family dynamics in writer-director Sian Heder’s screenplay. CODA is the second feature film for Heder, one of the main writers for Orange Is the New Black.
Ruby has a vibrant, humor-filled family, a family that is fun to be around. They are decidedly not barbarian drudges; they just don’t understand Ruby’s need to sing because they’ve never heard music.
But the family has grown to depend on Ruby to translate for them in the hearing world of doctor’s appointments and commercial fishing. Ruby is so essential to their functionality that losing Ruby’s presence is a legitimate concern.
Ruby’s older brother Leo has ideas for the business, but his role in the family has been overshadowed by Ruby’s, which he resents. Her mom self-isolates, afraid of being rejected by hearing people after her one youthful success as a beauty queen. The dad, determined to keep a multi-generational fishing business alive, is utterly lost as he faces new economic and regulatory realities, and he retreats into the Illegal Smile of cannabis.
Ruby is mentored by an exacting music teacher Mr. Villalobos (Eugenio Derbez), and their reationship is one of CODA’s fresh elements. What keeps Mr. Villalobos from being the standard movie martinet is his sensitivity; he has failed to reach his own dream of music stardom, and, like Ruby, he has been The Other, the subject of discrimination and low expectations.
The charismatic Derbez is brilliant here. His Mr. Villalobos is frustrated when Ruby’s teen priorities keep from meeting the standard that he knows is necessary, but he understands enough about Ruby’s challenges to keep giving her another chance. Derbez is a huge star in Mexico as a comedian and filmmaker.
Heder also chose to cast deaf actors for the deaf characters, which pays off in terms of authenticity. (Troy Kotsur, in particular, delivers a superb performance as the father.) She also chose just the right moment to impose silence when Ruby is singing to a large, hearing audience, so we can relate to her family trying to make sense of the audience reaction. There’s also searing dialogue between mother and daughter about the complexity of the deaf mom’s birthing a hearing baby.
CODA has the framework of a teen coming of age story, with mean kids at school and Ruby sweet on her classmate Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo). But the core of the movie is about the family and about whether Ruby will let Mr. Villalobos take her to a new opportunity.
Heder’s writing has made CODA, which could have been simplistic, into that rare, feel-good family film that is authentic, fumy and thought-provoking. CODA is in theaters and is also streaming on AppleTV.