This year’s Sundance hit, about the daughter of deaf parents who dreams of becoming a singer, is undeniably feelgood, if a little formulaic
When Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones) sings, she gets a good feeling. Sorting through the daily catch aboard her family’s fishing boat in Massachusetts, the 17-year-old high school student croons Etta James’s classic Something’s Gotta Hold on Me with unselfconscious abandon. She squeezes her eyes shut, a groove gripping her shoulders. Her voice is striking and lovely, not that her dad, Frank (a wonderful, drily funny Troy Kotsur), or older brother, Leo (Daniel Durant), seem to pay it any attention. The film soon reveals it’s not that they haven’t noticed – it’s that they haven’t heard.
This US remake of the 2014 French comedy-drama La Famille Bélier, about the hearing daughter of deaf parents who secretly dreams of becoming a singer, was a smash hit at this year’s Sundance film festival, winning a record-breaking $25m distribution deal with Apple TV+ as well as four of the festival’s top awards. It’s not hard to see why: it’s warm, fuzzy and feelgood, taking a timeless coming-of-age tale and braiding it with a timely political agenda. Writer-director (Tallulah) takes great care to increase and improve the long-overdue representation of the deaf community on screen, casting deaf actors in deaf roles (a responsibility the original film neglected).