A young woman with deaf parents discovers she has an amazing singing voice. However, chasing her singing career would mean leaving her family and taking her first steps towards adulthood. Would she do it?
Between La Famille Beliér's frequent juvenile jokes, redundant subplots and comically misguided performances, it seriously needed some work before going into production.
As well as ensuring that the film avoids the cloying sweetness of Hollywood's seasonal offering, Love the Coopers, the Beliers' idiosyncrasies strike a gently subversive note.
The heartening story of a young girl realising her singing talent is tempered by the borderline offensive portrayal of her deaf and mute farming parents ... as a pair of clowns that serve as the butt of most jokes.
More interested in appeasing an older audience that already treats the condition as a wondrous curiosity, rather than moving them even an inch outside their comfort zone.
The careful handling here ensures that we're never invited to laugh at the protagonists' supposed 'disability', making this more about everyone's struggle to be heard, whether they're deaf or not.
Hollywood Reporter
September 10, 2015
[Viard and Damiens] manage to project a lot of warmth despite the fact both have no spoken dialogue and their characters tend to be extremely direct.
