CODA (2021 film)

CODA is a 2021 American drama film featuring a hearing teenage girl who is a child of deaf adults (CODA for short). Written and directed by Sian Heder, the film stars Emilia Jones as the hearing girl, with Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur as her culturally Deaf parents and Daniel Durant as her Deaf brother. Eugenio Derbez and Ferdia Walsh-Peelo also star in the film.
The film, which is an English-language remake of the 2014 French-language film "La Famille Bélier", was filmed on location in Gloucester, Massachusetts in the United States.
"CODA" had its world premiere on , 2021 at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Apple acquired distribution rights to "CODA" for a festival-record $25 million. The film will be released in theaters and through the Apple TV+ streaming service on August 13, 2021.
Synopsis.
In Gloucester, Massachusetts in the United States, a culturally Deaf family runs a fishing business. Ruby, who is 17 years old and the only hearing family member, helps her Deaf parents and brother with the business. In high school, she joins the choir club, where she is attracted to her duet partner and finds a passion for singing. Her choirmaster encourages her to consider music school, and she has to decide between helping her family and pursuing her goal.
Production.
Development and writing.
"CODA", written and directed by Sian Heder, is an English-language remake of the French-language film "La Famille Bélier", which was released in 2014 and was successful at the French box office. Philippe Rousselet was one of the original film's producers, and he had the rights to do a remake. He and producer Patrick Wachsberger approached Heder to direct a remake for a United States audience. Heder said, "They were interested in adapting the film, but they wanted someone to make it unique and take the premise from the original and, also, reinvent it." By May 2019, the companies Pathé Films and Vendôme Group had formed a film production partnership to develop and produce English-language films, with the first being "CODA".
"CODA" is set in Gloucester, Massachusetts. While its predecessor "La Famille Bélier" was set on a rural dairy farm in France, Heder chose to set "CODA" in Gloucester, being familiar with the city from visiting the North Shore in the summer when growing up. Heder explained, "For me it has the combination of being very picturesque and quintessentially New England but also with a working-class grit to it." Heder learned American Sign Language in the process of writing the script, with 40% of it ultimately being in ASL. The director was helped by two deaf collaborators who she called "ASL masters", Alexandria Wailes and Anne Tomasetti.
To prepare for the film, Heder observed a fish processing plant and consulted the local harbormaster about how authorities would raid a boat. She received feedback from director Kenneth Lonergan and members of the fishing-industry nonprofit Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association. Several consultants and a fisherman educated Heder in local fishing practices.
Casting.
Heder first cast Marlee Matlin in "CODA". During the development process, the film's financiers resisted casting deaf actors for the remaining deaf characters. Matlin threatened to drop out unless deaf actors were cast, and the financiers ultimately relented.
Heder described the casting as an opportunity for Matlin to play against type, her previous roles having been "'put-together' and classy characters". Heder said, "Marlee, in real life, is much more funny, and she has a dirty sense of humor. This (role) was a working-class fisherman’s wife, and she has a lot of elements of her personality that were very right for this character." Matlin used her connections with Deaf West Theatre in Los Angeles, California to help Heder find additional deaf actors. Heder saw Troy Kotsur in a Deaf West production and cast him as the fisherman and father. She cast Daniel Durant after finding him through auditions. Matlin, Kotsur, and Durant were already familiar with each other through their collaboration on the Deaf West production of the musical "Spring Awakening".
For the deaf actors, Heder hired a rotating group of ASL interpreters that facilitated communication with signing and speaking among the cast and crew. She connected with the deaf community in nearby Boston to secure the interpreters for on-set communication. Matlin said, "[Heder] really immersed herself into our culture and made every attempt to learn and to work with us and having two directors of sign language on the set, plus interpreters, plus the crew who learned our language, everyone working together, it was working like on any other set, but the sign language aspect made it extra special."
The director also auditioned hundreds of teenage girls before casting Emilia Jones as the hearing member of the deaf family. Jones took voice lessons and learned ASL for nine months before filming started. Heder also chose to cast Eugenio Derbez as the girl's choirmaster, seeing him as a fit for her "amalgamation of Heder’s college rhythm teacher and her high school drama and English teachers".
Filming.
The film was shot on location in Gloucester, Massachusetts in the middle of 2019.
In the film, the family lives in what WBUR's "The ARTery" described as a "creaky clapboard cottage has a yard jammed with boats, traps and nets". During location scouting, Heder came across what she found to be the ideal house for the family home and received permission from its residents to use it as a filming location. The choirmaster's home was a Victorian-style house on the sea, where Heder had visited family friends multiple times in her childhood, and they allowed her to film there.
A fisherman who educated Heder in local fishing practices allowed his fishing trawler to be used as a film set. Scenes set in a flooded quarry were filmed at the Steel Derrick quarry in Rockport, Massachusetts.
Release.
Sundance screening.
"CODA" had its world premiere on , 2021 at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival as one of the opening-day films. It screened as part of the festival's US Dramatic Competition. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States at the time, "CODA" was screened virtually.
The film received "immediate rave reviews", according to Agence France Presse, which highlighted the positive comments from "Variety" and "Deadline Hollywood". "IndieWire" wrote, has reportedly crafted a crowd-pleasing tearjerker whose commercial promise will easily spark a bidding war between theatrical distributors and deep-pocketed streamers." "USA Today" summarized the reception, "Propelled by its powerful inclusivity of the deaf community, it's a refreshing reboot of the traditional teen romance and coming-of-age story."
Two days after "CODA"s premiere, Apple acquired distribution rights to the film for a festival-record $25 million.
At Sundance, "CODA" won the U.S. Grand Jury Prize, U.S. Dramatic Audience Award, and a Special Jury Ensemble Cast Award. The film's director Sian Heder won Best Director in the U.S. Dramatic section.
Theaters and Apple TV+.
The film will be released in theaters and through the streaming service Apple TV+ on August 13, 2021.
Critical reception.
Critics found "CODA"s premise to be conventional but praised Emilia Joness lead performance for invigorating the coming-of-age story. The review aggregator website Metacritic surveyed and assessed 12 reviews as positive and four as mixed. It gave an aggregate weighted score of 72 out of 100, which it said indicated "generally favorable reviews". The similar website Rotten Tomatoes surveyed and, categorizing the reviews as positive or negative, assessed 92 as positive and five as negative for a 95% rating. Among the reviews, it determined an average rating of 7.7 out of 10.
Deaf commentary.
Glenn Whipp, writing for "Los Angeles Times", said of Marlee Matlin and "CODA", "[It] serves as both a showcase for her talent and yet another example of her determination to tell organically authentic stories about the lives of human beings who happen to be deaf."
Matlin described her interest in getting "CODA" made, "I felt that audiences would really see deaf people in a film... There are so many levels for people to identify with and, for people with no connection, who have never met a deaf person, to see sign language, to see deaf people in normal, day-to-day settings... People think that deaf people are monolithic in terms of how they approach life. And this film bursts that myth... But to burst that myth, it had to be told as authentically as possible. And it’s strange because studios clearly have the ability to greenlight a film and cast whomever they want, and there continues to be a lack of awareness that you can tell universal stories with deaf characters."
Kotsur said, "You have to think a little bit outside the box and present more opportunities, instead of just having two options... You know, you write this script because somebody's deaf, or I'm writing it because it's a character that happens to be deaf. There's a distinction there.”