Sundance 2021 Film Review: CODA
Coda transcends its tropes with verve and heart
Welcome to the Strange Harbors coverage of the virtual 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Siân Heder’s heartfelt curtain-raiser kicks off this year’s program, a radiantly warm tale of a teenage girl navigating the tension-filled territory between individuality and the bonds of family. An American adaptation of the French dramedy La famille Béllier, Coda wears its coming-of-age tropes on its sleeve, but its confident construction and tender performances strike at the heart of what makes convention so effective. Minor spoilers ahead…
If there’s one thing to take away from CODA - filmmaker Siân Heder’s (Tallulah) opening night crowd-pleaser at Sundance - it’s that perhaps originality is overvalued as cinematic spice of life. Leafing through the pages of well-tread narratives with an almost carefree abandon, CODA primarily functions as a mashup of tropes. A coming-of-age comedy and family drama with a dash of inspirational tearjerker, the film runs through a laundry list of familiar beats, but Heder’s screenplay - adapted from 2014’s French dramedy La famille Béllier - finds refreshing poignancy and cultural specificity within its seen-it-before structure. This remake, with its deft storytelling and its handful of moving performances, proves that maybe conventions are conventions for a reason.
CODA gets its title from its main character, Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones in a star-making turn). A child of deaf adults and the only hearing person in her family (her brother is also deaf), Ruby spends much of her high school life as a proxy: The Rossis are a traditional Gloucester fishing family (borrowing the locale from Heder’s real-life upbringing in Cambridge, Massachusetts) that relies heavily upon Ruby’s hearing to navigate their trade. More than just a translator, Ruby wakes up every break of dawn to work alongside her father (Troy Kotsur) and brother (Daniel Durant) on their fishing trawler, and whether she likes it or not, she’s also the one responsible for negotiating catch prices at an increasingly hostile marketplace. And balancing out her fisherman lifestyle is the all-too-familiar monster of high school, where Ruby flits in and out as an outcast, consistently teased for her disabled family.
“There isn’t a single trope that CODA doesn’t mine for pulls of the heartstrings, but Heder’s deft scripting creates fresh and affecting avenues for intra-family tension.”
However, it’s also at school where Ruby finds an unlikely new calling. Signing up for senior-year classes with her brazen best friend Gertie (Amy Forsyth), she recklessly follows her crush Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Sing Street) into the school choir. Here, Ruby is shown to be harboring a repressed secret: a killer voice and a passion for music. Under the tutelage of the brassy-but-affectionate Mr. V (Eugenio Derbez), she’s encouraged to hone her skills into more than just a few credits - perhaps, entry into the esteemed Berklee School of Music in Boston.
There isn’t a single trope that CODA doesn’t mine for pulls of the heartstrings, but Heder’s deft scripting creates fresh and affecting avenues for tension and drama. Yes, Gertie fills the best friend role with the requisite sass and raunch; yes, Mr. V imparts Hollywood teacher wisdom through harsh lessons; and yes, of course Ruby clashes with her family on her newfound passion - but underneath these archetypes, Heder finds extra layers of relatability. With Ruby’s unique position, there’s a moving conflict that goes beyond the clash between the bonds of family and forging your own path, touching upon a melancholic tone where a young woman develops a passion that can’t even be experienced - let alone enjoyed - by those closest to her. It’s here where the supporting cast shines most brightly: Heder chose to cast deaf actors as the members of Ruby’s family, and Troy Kotsur, Daniel Durant, and Marlee Matlin are phenomenal, adding some much needed dimensions to their stock characters. Matlin, in particular, shines through an entire prism of emotions, at one point hitting her daughter with an especially stinging barb: “If I was blind, would you want to paint?”
CODA is modest in its construction, riding the rails of its coming-of-age structure, but there’s something remarkable about the way the film organizes its familiar threads into a rousing crescendo: It’s biggest asset isn’t its inherent tropeyness, but the fact that its largely unashamed of it. CODA is also one of those films that seemingly ends multiple times, but it’s near impossible to fault it for that either - each denouement manages to kick even more dust in your eyes. Siân Heder has crafted an nth degree crowdpleaser, one that looks like many other things out there, but utterly unique in feeling.
