Is CODA really a feel-good crowd-pleaser? It is serviceable, conventional, frothy and artistically lazy at best.
The 2021 Sundance Film Festival is currently in full swing after opening with CODA, the English-language remake of La Famille Bélier (Dir. Éric Lartigau, France, 2014). Let’s be straightforward: it was a rather painful experience.
When looking at most reviews published about CODA, it seems that it is widely agreed that the movie is a “feel-good crowd-pleaser”. But, would it be a way to avoid pointing out its numerous fundamental flaws? CODA is unfortunately too conventional and too superficial to evoke real emotions.
To be honest, it’s not a pleasure to write a review only to say that a movie is definitely not a must-watch. Firstly, because there are apparently many people among the “pleased crowd” with whom this movie has resonated, and secondly because it’s more interesting to spend time discussing successful, innovative, memorable, important movies, just like In The Same Breath, which is one of our favorite Sundance 2021 titles so far!
How many times can movies rehash the story of a child whose passion is not accepted or understood by his or her parents until an expected twist makes his or her parents willing to support their kid in pursuing his or her dream against all odds?
CODA’s script is clumsy, generic, and conventional. After 15 minutes, one can safely predict the next events until the ending scene.
Even Ruby’s narrative arc revolving around her singing career is not convincing. After enrolling in her high school’s choir, she shies away from the first rehearsal but delivers an objectively outstanding singing performance the next time, after her whimsical teacher explained to her that she needed to breathe like a “big dog” instead of a “small dog”. At this moment, she went directly from shy to an actual confident singer with a very beautiful voice and technique. She does not sound like the rough diamond who will need a lot of practice. Therefore, this automatically weakens the main plot of the movie since we already know she will end up being successful as a singer. This is why the director had a hard time showing any kind of evolution in Ruby’s singing narrative arc to the point that she filmed the exact same scene later in the film, at the professor’s house this time, where instead of asking her to “breathe like a big dog”, he asked her to “scream like a monster”.
CODA’s treatment of Ruby’s family is uneven at best. We are introduced to Ruby’s parents who seem not to care about their daughter’s love for singing. After confessing to her teacher that singing was all she had, Ruby informed her mother that she has joined the school choir. Her mother showed no interest whatsoever and even found it very incongruous to be interested in singing. Ruby being 17 years old, had her mother never noticed that her daughter liked singing? Had she never touched upon the subject with her at all?
When seeing such little mark of attention from Ruby’s mother, it turns out that as a viewer, I don’t really mind when Ruby threatens her family to leave them to pursue a college degree in singing. Even more when her mother’s only reaction is that if Ruby – the only person in her deaf family – leaves them, they would need to hire a hearing person to work with them on their fishing boat, which the family cannot afford according to Ruby’s mother.
In this context, it is laughable to see the plot play out just like it is supposed to do. Ruby finally decides to stay home to help her parents, abandoning the idea of going to college, which contradicts the last two interactions she had with her parents when, fed up, she expressed her desire to live her own life and not to keep supporting her parents forever. The only reason for this inconsistent twist being that it will allow the parents to finally realize their daughter needs to pursue her dream and, in the end, insist on letting her go.
But even setting aside the characters’ development, the movie is very light on details about the characters and fails to actively engage the audience in meaningful dialogues. What is more, the conventional, superficial story, with very little information on the characters poses a major problem to the cast. Apart from Emilia Jones’ performance which is fair and correct, most characters are bundled up in a very light script and their performances seem very cliché, especially for Ruby’s mother. Even Ruby’s crush lacks substance. We don’t know anything about him and their love story seems very superficial and cliché.
Finally, what frustrates me most about the film is just how very little it brings to the table. The film proves to be artistically lazy and lacks inspiration. Despite the use of a lot of wide angles that exalt beautiful landscapes and filming locations, it turns out that the movie does not try anything artistically. The main locations where the plot unfolds are always filmed in the same way. And apart from rehashing the exact same effect Director Éric Lartigau used in the original movie, La Famille Bélier, where the sound is muted when Ruby sings at her school’s representation, to make us feel like her parents, CODA’s director struggles to craft uplifting sequences in her film. Even the singing scenes are disappointing. The same song is repeated over and over again throughout the film, with no difference of interpretation each time it is played. Even the final year show of the school choir consists of a rather flat performance of a considerably lower interest and mastery than the second rehearsal of the choir, which takes place at the very beginning of the film.
All in all, CODA ends up frustrating as it is mainly cliché and superficial. It does not exploit its material and cruelly lacks inspiration.
