CODA

Director: Siân Heder
Starring: Emilia Jones, Troy Kotsur, Daniel Durant, Marlee Matlin, Eugenio Derbez, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Amy Forsyth, Kevin Chapman
Running Time: 111 minutes
Rating: PG-13

★★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)

At first glance, there doesn't appear to be all that much to CODA, but that's exactly why it stands out as entirely different, yet warmly familiar. It's an intimate yet universal character-driven story told exceptionally well, functioning as a deserved break from some of the more bloated, self-important awards season entries. And while its received some criticism for being one of those crowd pleasing, heart-tugging Sundance favorites, that label qualifies as a compliment under these circumstances. In both concept and execution, you could argue writer/director Siân Heder's coming-of-age drama is downright rebellious for establishing itself as the kind of film that's increasingly more difficult to release and make these days, especially at this level.

In adapting the 2014 French film, La Famille Bélier, Heder straightforwardly asks the audience to accept the premise at face value with refreshing honesty, bringing the goods to back it up. The surprises come not without any twists or turns in a plot that's pretty basic in an efficient way, but how intelligently observed the details are within it. The genre to which this belongs is nothing new, but the specificity of the situation is, and that's where the movie upends expectations, proving to be exactly what we've sorely missed of late. Featuring a brilliant, somehow completely overlooked lead performance and a supporting one deserving of every bit of acclaim it's gotten, it leaves you on a high, representing a true tipping point in its depiction of deaf characters on screen. But the real joy comes in losing yourself so fully in the story that this fact seems like an afterthought. 

17 year-old Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones) is the CODA (child of deaf adults) of the title and the only hearing member of her family consisting of parents Frank (Troy Kotsur) and Jackie (Marlee Matlin) and brother Leo (Daniel Durant). All are deaf and use American Sign Language, with Ruby acting as de facto translator as her dad and brother work in the fishing business in Gloucester, Massachusetts. With Frank and Leo having new sanctions imposed on them by the local board that have made their jobs far more financially challenging, Ruby struggles to fit in at school. Somewhat of an outcast, she impulsively signs up for the choir to get closer to her crush, Miles (Ferdio Walsh-Peelo). But after she overcomes the nerves of performing in front of her classmates, choir director Bernardo "Mr. V" Villalobos (Eugenio Derbez), hears true talent, offering Ruby private lessons so she can audition for Berklee College of Music in Boston. Stuck between pursuing her own dreams or staying home with the family who depends on her, she's faced with a potentially life altering choice. 

The story Heder tells flows smoothly and easily and the actors are so natural that it becomes impossible not to get swept along for the ride. Actually shot in Gloucester, there's an authenticity in having this anchored by a predominantly deaf cast who, aside from Oscar winner Matlin, aren't widely known to the public, but bring a specific perspective to the roles that may have otherwise slipped through the cracks.You have to imagine the film would have an entirely different feel had we not been granted access to deaf people using sign language, working and seeing them in scripted, but realistic situations.

It's not a stretch to claim only a small percentage of viewers probably have interaction with those in the deaf community, likely making the portrayal eye-opening for many. To watch it without the benefit of subtitles only magnifies this experience, although what's most surprising about that is how anyone with no understanding of ASL could still follow because of the actions and reactions of the characters. Conversely, there's also a feeling of not completely grasping everything that's going on in certain scenes and having to fill in the blanks, creating a certain disorientation that mirrors the themes of the plot. 

While it's been unfortunately rare until now seeing deaf people in films running a business or having sex lives, Seder's script doesn't put a an exclamation point on it, playing the scenes exactly for what they are. Nor does she overlook the toll it's all taken on Ruby as the only hearing family member, put in the odd position of translating and sometimes even advocating for her parents at appointments or in social situations. Mocked and bullied by her classmates when she was younger for speaking like a deaf person, there's a certain amount of shame and embarrassment surrounding how she feels about her family. And after finally finding something she excels at and enjoys, it's now fear and guilt holding her back. That none of this comes across as sappy lies in English actress Emilia Jones' performance, which has unfairly been the least talked about aspect of the film's success. In nearly every scene, she's not only believable as this shy, awkward teen being pulled in two directions, but her singing's great and exactly what's needed for what Heder's trying to accomplish.

Sensing Ruby's potential while knowing she lacks the confidence to truly let go, Eugenio Derbez is terrific as Mr. V, avoiding a lot of cliches that accompany inspirational teachers on screen. He doesn't easily suffer fools and has no intention of wasting his time on someone who doesn't really want it, putting Ruby at a crossroads just as parents seem to need her the most. The idea that they can't fully appreciate her gift without the benefit of hearing is challenged throughout, specifically in Ruby's relationship with her father, Frank, played by Troy Kotsur. The theater vet steals every scene with priceless mannerisms and expressions that reflect both the character's warmth and sometimes vulgar sense of humor and frustration without words. 

In what's probably Kotsur's most memorable moment, Frank watches Ruby perform with only the audience's reaction to guide him, his face conveying a complicated mix of isolation and pride. As Jackie, Matlin excels in depicting a mother and wife striving equally hard to keep this family going, giving the actress the rare opportunity to play against type as a working class matriarch fighting to make ends meet. And in just a few scenes, Daniel Durant conveys in Leo the mounting, bubbling pressures that have come from often being on the outside looking in.  

Functioning as a reminder of how movies have recently overcomplicated things and need to get back to basics, it contains the dramatic DNA of some beloved low budget 90's indies, back when that was considered a positive. But it's actually better than many of those by being more surefooted in what it's trying to do, clocking in at a compact 111 minutes before arriving at a tearjerker of an ending that actually feels earned.

Thanks to the acting, the characters are lived-in and we grow to care about them as people rather than screenplay board pieces rearranged on a whim to serve the plot. To an extent, every film peddles in some form of manipulation, but the key comes in either hiding that so well it's barely noticeable or sometimes even just truthfully wrapping its arms around that conceit as kind of an armor against the allegation. CODA somehow does both, culminating in an effort that's capable of converting even the most jaded and cynical of moviegoers.           

Limetown

Creators: Zak Akers and Skip Bronkie
Starring: Jessica Biel, Stanley Tucci, Sherri Saum, Omar Elba, Alessandro Juliani, Louis Ferreira, Marlee Matlin, Sheryl Lee, Janet Kidder, Kandyse McClure, John Beasley, Hiro Kanagawa, Kelly Jenrette, Vera Frederickson
Release Date: 2019

★★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)

There's a scene that comes late in Facebook Watch's thriller series Limetown where an actress is called upon to play a character who's acting. You know those scenes. A performance within a performance, in this case with her character withholding information someone else doesn't have, but the audience does. And it's a guilty, self conscious performance. Not from the actress, but the character, which is how it should be since characters are rarely capable of believable acting.

The performer doing it is Jessica Biel, who we're learning is very much an excellent actress, more so since finding her lane in dark, psychological TV dramas like 2018's The Sinner, which earned her an Emmy nomination. Since the talent was always there, even if the quality of projects weren't, she started developing her own and hasn't looked back, with viewers reaping the benefits. That series centered around a giant mystery many doubted could be satisfactorily paid off, until it was, in a revelatory gut punch of an episode that ranks alongside the most exciting hours of dramatic television in years.

Limetown is similarly built around a mystery, albeit one larger in scope, with far-reaching consequences familiar to anyone who listened to creators Zack Akers and Skip Bronkie's 2015 podcast on which it's based. A podcast that many, in a neat War of the Worlds callback, actually believed to be based on actual events. It isn't, but given the premise, it's not hard to understand why, as podcaster Lia Haddock attempts to unravel the story behind the mysterious disappearance of 326 people at a neuroscience research facility in Tennessee in 2003. The scenario feels like something that could have happened and fell through the cracks, and benefits by having a "host" that's the protagonist of her own story, nicely setting up a screen adaptation where the lead will have to do much more than sit behind a microphone talking about dates, details and evidence.

The series is both at an advantage and disadvantage in having to show rather than tell everything, since what's shown could easily fall short of our imaginations. Then again, so can anything. Those who haven't listened to the podcast won't be lost and have the added benefit of a clean slate, while the many that did will find it remains faithful to and improves upon it in welcome ways. But the big takeaway is that it's riskier, specifically in regards to the actions of its central character, a complex, polarizing female anti-hero sure to split audiences. And much like The Sinner, Biel takes her on a dark journey toward the truth, culminating in a season finale that lays all its cards on the table to reveal an awful lot of answers, even if our protagonist proves emotionally unequipped to handle them.

Lia Haddock (Biel) grew up in a household where she got used to tuning out the noise, escaping to her room with a tape recorder to avoid the sounds of her parents fighting. But she soon found a captive audience in her uncle, Emile (Stanley Tucci), a quite, reserved man who would often stand in as Lia's interview subject, encouraging her to use her imagination in the wildest ways possible. That is until one day Emile left for a mystery trip and never returned, forcing Lia to grow up without her beloved uncle. And whatever scenario her childhood imagination conjured up about his whereabouts couldn't ever come close to matching the real story that would occur in a place called Limetown in 2003.

Now an investigative reporter and APR (American Public Radio) podcast host, new witnesses and evidence have only heightened Lia's determination in finding out what happened to her uncle and the other residents who mysteriously vanished from what was part utopian village, part scientific research lab. Something big was happening and at the center of it all was their controversial cult-like leader, Dr. Oskar Totem (Alessandro Juliani), who was literally burned at the stake in a town of his own creation.

With pressure mounting from her editor, Gina (Sherri Saum) to can the story if she can't find any leads, Lia's given a hapless partner in Mark (Omar Elba), who tries keep her honest and on task as surviving Limetown residents begin emerging from the shadows over a decade after disappearing. Now they want to talk. Sort of. And with conditions. But doing so puts their lives and Lia's in immediate danger, each interview bringing her dangerously close to the truth of what happened. Even if the real question just may be how far she'll willing to go to get it.  

Broken into 10 half-hour episodes all directed by Rebecca Thomas, the format seamlessly synchronizes with a story that needs to gradually unspool information, yet do it at a fairly rapid pace, one witness and clue at a time. When alternating between Lia's present-day interviews with these people and flashbacks of their time in the village, the pieces come together. And many of the town-set scenes and the subjects' explanations of them end up being an acting showcase for supporting players such as Kelly Jenrette, Louis Ferreira, John Beasley, and Marlee Matlin, each of whom are afforded the opportunity to portray two variations on their characters in different timelines.

Those doubting whether the "world" of Limetown so thoroughly and realistically detailed in the podcast could translate to the screen, it does, as the production team succeeds in not only making it look and feel like a habitable (if appropriately cold and sterile) town, but a place where its subjects feel comfortable enough to stay, while still being frightened to leave. A somewhat infamous episode on the podcast, "Napoleon," is memorably adapted in the fourth episode, exploring the full scope of the Black Mirror-like experiment being conducted, with all its moral and social implications. This only grows in complexity as the series marches on, lending the town's adopted catchphrase of "I Have Heard The Future" a far more sinister and complicated undercurrent than its pro-technology optimism seems to preach.

Ultimately, this is Lia's story, or rather it becomes that when the podcaster's obsession starts to reveal more about her own emotional trauma stemming from her uncle's disappearance than the overarching Limetown mystery. They're not exactly one in the same. Who Lia is at her core becomes the biggest and most rewarding deviation from the podcast, as she evolves into someone who may not be worth rooting for anymore, manipulating and blackmailing to get to the truth regardless of how many more die in the process.

Lia's abject denial in the face of this gets scary enough that we eventually understand the true purpose of the goofy Mark character beyond the writers' need to give her someone to bounce theories off and provide comic relief. He's there to keep her sane, providing a rational moral compass as it becomes clearer hers is breaking. We don't fully grasp the extent of Lia's obsession until the final few episodes which find her going off the deep end in ways that are crazily unsettling. Better still is the argument that this proves she truly was the only person capable of making the sacrifices necessary to see this investigation through to its end.

An even stronger case can be made that Biel is the ideal choice to play Lia, completely owning this complex headcase with steely, unwavering determination. It helps that few actresses have a speaking voice as strong or authoritative, lending complete credibility to the podcasting scenes,  never letting us doubt this woman could spend a career behind the mic hooking listeners. But it's Biel's work in the interview scenes that paradoxically convey Lia's tremendous fear of her survivor subjects and whoever may still control them and the reporter's seemingly unshakeable commitment to getting her answers regardless of it.

With her bob haircut frequently buried under a hoodie or knit hat, wearing baggy clothes and looking as if she hasn't slept for days, Lia initially seems at surface level to be an entirely desexualized character. That is until we realize, in jarring ways, this isn't the case at all and her desires provide as much of an outlet as her work. She's a lesbian, even if that labeling seems pointless in the face of everything else Lia's carrying around, which the actress reveals to us in carefully modulated doses throughout. Like her troubled relationship with her estranged mother (played by Laura Palmer herself, Sheryl Lee). It's a high-wire, anxiety-ridden performance that perfectly compliments Stanley Tucci's calming, detached presence in the flashbacks opposite a young, impressionable Lia. The true measure of that impact is felt in the present-day scenes every time her adult counterpart hits a wall in the investigation and a depressing sense of hopelessness washes over Biel's face. She doesn't have to say anything. We get it.

The finale ("Answers") delivers all the unsettling revelations viewers have been waiting on, while supplying literal clock-ticking suspense when Lia comes face-to-face with her most important witness, an ex Limetown administrator played with terrifying matter-of-factness by Janet Kidder. It's basically a clinic on how skilled people can be at completely compartmentalizing whatever they wish, regardless of the consequences. The shock comes not so much in hearing about what caused the mess that is Limetown, but seeing it depicted on screen in painstaking, almost over-analytic detail from the perspective of someone incapable of framing it any other way.

Closing on a cliffhanger in the strictest sense, it's crisp, efficient storytelling that does something unusual in provoking a strong emotional response by bombarding us with cold, hard facts. That happened, then this happened, then that happened. We most commiserate with Lia during this reveal, perhaps lending justification to her mindset, while at the same time giving us pause as to whether she's now employing similarly sociopathic methods in her own quest for truth. You can't help but consider that while Limetown's story is entirely fictional, its timely context strikes a nerve that hits uncomfortably close to home.