Instead, scenes in which we hear Ruby sing, including one where she reluctantly, then ferociously, belts out Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now, are grounded in emotion, not spectacle. Heder chooses not to structure the film as a series of showy musical numbers. If this sounds worryingly like an episode of the shrill teen TV show Glee, mercifully it couldn’t be less like it. The two are to perform Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s Motown hit You’re All I Need to Get By at the school concert, an excuse for them to practise a cappella in Ruby’s cramped bedroom. Equipped with an endless supply of motivational quotes and quirky cardigans, he prescribes her breathing exercises and a duet with – eek! – her crush, Miles ( Sing Street star Ferdia Walsh-Peelo). Her music teacher, Bernardo “Mr V” Villalobos (Eugenio Derbez, straining for inspirational cuddliness), takes note of her forthright talent as well as her faltering confidence, insisting she work towards auditioning for Boston’s Berklee College of Music. It’s a full-time commitment that competes with her schoolwork, her social life and, now, choir practice, which she signs up for on a whim. Ruby is a Coda – a hearing child of deaf adults – and as her brother is also deaf, she serves as the whole family’s unofficial interpreter, translating their American Sign Language (ASL) to both the local fishing community and the meddling authorities. 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). 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. 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. The film soon reveals it’s not that they haven’t noticed – it’s that they haven’t heard. 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. She squeezes her eyes shut, a groove gripping her shoulders. 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. W hen Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones) sings, she gets a good feeling.
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