{"id":16965,"date":"2021-08-11T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-11T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=16965"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:14:13","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:14:13","slug":"la-famille-belier-the-french-dramedy-behind-coda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/la-famille-belier-the-french-dramedy-behind-coda\/","title":{"rendered":"La Famille B\u00e9lier<\/i>: The French Dramedy Behind CODA<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Opening in theaters and on Apple TV+ this week, CODA <\/em>has been greatly anticipated since its smash debut<\/a> last January at the (virtual) Sundance Film Festival. There, it won the Grand Jury and Audience Prizes, and prompted a distributor bidding war that raked in a record-breaking $25 million. By all accounts, CODA<\/em> is a sure bet, an uplifting crowd-pleaser about a Child of Deaf Adults (thus the acronym) who discovers her talent for singing, played by a fresh-faced starlet (Emilia Jones), that puts enough of a twist on coming-of-age formulas to certify \u2018fresh.\u2019 As Katey Rich wrote in Vanity Fair, <\/em>\u201cYou\u2019ve seen versions of this story before, sure\u2014but this one deserves another spin.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Rich\u2014and much post-Sundance coverage of the new film\u2014fails to note is that CODA <\/em>is quite literally a \u2018version of this story\u2019 seen before. It is an English-language remake of the 2014 French dramedy La Famille B\u00e9lier <\/em>[The B\u00e9lier Family], <\/em>a $55 million domestic box office hit in France, never released in the US. Perhaps, as Variety <\/em>critic Peter Debruge speculated, would-be distributors into the US market calculated that La Famille B\u00e9lier<\/em>\u2019s feel-good premise \u201cwould play best to those with little patience for subtitles,\u201d which is also to say that it was too cheery and commercial for American art house snobs. Instead then, Debruge suggested, the French hit <\/em>was \u201cripe\u201d for a Hollywood remake, readily consumable by the English-speaking masses. To pluck that promising fruit, U.S. producer Patrick Wachsberger bought the rights; enlisted Si\u00e2n Heder to adapt the script and direct; and co-financed the project with Path\u00e9 and La Famille Beli\u00e9r\u2019s <\/em>original French production company, Vend\u00f4me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is easy to see the potential these filmmakers and film-financiers saw, both in La Famille Beli\u00e9r<\/em>\u2019s (bankable) strengths and its (correctable) weaknesses. Indeed, deafness has been explored in cinema with reliable ticket-selling and award-winning effects since at least 1986\u2019s Children of a Lesser God<\/em>, which garnered four Oscar nominations and a Best Actress win for deaf actress Marlee Matlin. Last year, Sound of Metal <\/em>(2019), about a drummer with progressive hearing loss <\/em>and the deaf community he joins, was good for five Oscar nominations and two wins, in Sound and Film Editing.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the Seventh Art\u2019s love of music\u2014one of the most powerful weapons in its audiovisual arsenal\u2014it makes sense that it has made emotional hay out of the loss (or absence) of music as a particularly poignant tragedy of deafness or hearing loss, to the point of clich\u00e9 and the consternation<\/a> of some deaf critics. (See also Mr. Holland\u2019s Opus <\/em>[1995], <\/em>the Creed <\/em>franchise [2015; 2018], and A Star is Born <\/em>[2018]). Most specifically in relation to B\u00e9lier <\/em>and CODA<\/em>, the German film Beyond Silence <\/em>(1996, dir. Caroline Link) proved just how sympathetic a C.O.D.A. protagonist could be, and how richly dramatic the dynamics of a mixed hearing\/deaf family, particularly the irony of a C.O.D.A. with an innate gift for music (in this case, for the clarinet)\u2014riding them all the way to a Foreign Language Oscar nomination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Beyond Silence, La Famille B\u00e9lier\u2019s <\/em>greatest strength is its female C.O.D.A. protagonist and the actress who plays her: Louane Emera, a Florence Pugh-lookalike with the voice of an angel, cast by director \u00c9ric Lartigau on the strength of her performance\u2014and phenomenal popular appeal\u2014on France\u2019s version of the television singing contest, The Voice. <\/em>Beautiful in that relatable way, Emera carries the film, which opens on her character Paula, as she confers with a veterinarian about a just-born calf on her family\u2019s dairy farm in rural northwestern France at dawn. As the B\u00e9lier family\u2019s only hearing member, Paula is immediately sympathetic, uncomplainingly devoted to translating between them and the hearing world, wise beyond her years. Her affability and bilingual fluency (in sign and spoken language) are crucial to the farm\u2019s success. On the school bus, she deftly negotiates supply contracts. At a weekend farmer\u2019s market, she negotiates interactions with customers, including the smarmy town mayor, who serves to typify\u2014and vilify\u2014condescending attitudes towards people with disabilities, including Paula\u2019s parents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Unfortunately, just as Paula is La Famille B\u00e9lier\u2019s <\/em>greatest strength, her parents are its greatest weakness. Rodolphe and Gigi are played respectively by Fran\u00e7ois Damiens and Karin Viard, both of whom are hearing actors best known for comic roles, controversially enough. (In contrast, Paula\u2019s deaf brother is played by deaf actor, Luca Gelberg.) Jarringly, Gigi and Rodolphe are played for laughs, especially in the first two-thirds of the film. Their appearances precipitate odd shifts in tone from drama to crude slapstick, sometimes even accompanied with a goofy soundtrack. Used to underscore Paula\u2019s pluck, they seem determined to embarrass her, not because they are deaf but because they are tone-deaf. Rodolphe lays on the horn to pick up Paula from school and, in one scene, conducts a conversation with his hand up a cow\u2019s ass. Costumed in a jokily bright and print-forward wardrobe, Gigi excitedly exhibits Paula\u2019s menstrual blood-stained pants to Paula\u2019s crush. And they have loud sex when Paula\u2019s best friend Mathilde (Roxane Duran) visits; this despite a doctor\u2019s advice of three-weeks\u2019 abstinence to cure a case of thrush\u2014which Paula translates (and I watched) in full cringe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In typical coming-of-age fashion, <\/em>the main conflict arises in La Famille B\u00e9lier <\/em>when Paula discovers her own \u201cvoice.\u201d Here, this common metaphor is literalized when Paula joins the school choir, on a whim because she has the hots for its star-pupil Gabriel (Ilian Bergala). (Mathilde chides her for \u201cacting like Bella in Twilight<\/em>,\u201d the high bar of moony teen lust the world-over, apparently.)  Quickly, though, it becomes clear that Paula\u2019s vocal talents eclipse Gabriel\u2019s, and that her passion for singing eclipses her ardor for him. The school\u2019s choir director, Monsieur Thomasson (\u00c9ric Elmosnino)–a caricature of the burnt-out teacher whose flame is reignited by an exceptional student–immediately recognizes Paula\u2019s \u201cgift.\u201d He sets out to help her develop it, first for a school concert and then an audition to a music college in Paris. As happy as a lark, and as naturally songful, Paula belts out Michel Sardou\u2019s \u201cEn chantant<\/em> [Singing],\u201d the lyrics of which proclaim how much better life is when doing so. Beside Thomasson\u2019s piano, the film lingers on the pleasure of Paula\u2019s melodious, and therefore convincing, delivery of this sentiment.  For good reason then, Paula worries that her newfound singing voice will forever alienate her from her family. She keeps mum about her lessons until, inevitably, they come into conflict with her parents\u2019 agenda, in running the farm and, as it happens, Rodolphe\u2019s mayoral run. Angry, Gigi tells Paula she was heartbroken when Paula was born hearing, because she foresaw it as the source of their inevitable rift. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, Gigi and Rodolphe agree to attend the school concert, where Paula\u2019s performance provokes tears and a standing ovation from the audience. Mid-song, Lartigue silences the soundtrack to render Gigi and Rodolphe\u2019s perspective, a gimmick also used in the final scene of Sound of Metal<\/em>, to quite different effect. <\/em>In the latter film, the silencing is cathartic, experienced\u2014by the protagonist and film viewer\u2014as peaceful relief, signaling the drummer-protagonist\u2019s acceptance of his hearing loss after much (cacophonous) struggle. But in La Famille B\u00e9lier, <\/em>the silencing reads as tragic, the cutting off of the music that the audience (diegetic and non-diegetic) rapturously enjoys, made all the more painful because it is their own daughter\u2019s voice they are denied. In this scene, deafness is rendered as pitiable \u201chandicap,\u201d even as dialogue explicitly rejects that connotation elsewhere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this is a feel-good story, and so this painful conflict will be neatly resolved. Paula\u2019s concert triumph convinces Rodolphe and Gigi that Paula must pursue her passion. Predawn, the B\u00e9liers race to Paris for the audition. As her family watches from the balcony, Paula busts out Sardou\u2019s \u201cJe Vole [I Fly],\u201d the lyrics of which are cloyingly on-the-nose, which didn\u2019t stop the tears from running down mine: \u201cDear parents, I leave\/I love you, but I leave\u2026I\u2019m not fleeing\/I\u2019m flying.\u201d As if that weren\u2019t enough, Paula then signs the lyrics for her family, finding a way to make the song a bridge\u2014rather than a chasm\u2014between them. (Compare this to the scene in Children of a Lesser God <\/em>in which James [William Hurt] struggles unsuccessfully to translate Bach to his deaf lover, Sarah [Matlin]). Despite its obviousness, this <\/em>climax\u2019s emotional wallop is undeniable, and no doubt clinched the film\u2019s status as remake-able.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By all reports, CODA<\/em> capitalizes on La Famille B\u00e9lier<\/em>\u2019s (formulaic) strengths and has addressed some of the original film\u2019s weaknesses, not least of all in better developing the roles of the parents, hiring deaf actors to play them (including Matlin as the mother), and generally treating deafness with greater sensitivity. It is also reported that the climatic song has been changed from Sardou\u2019s \u201cJe Vole\u201d to Joni Mitchell\u2019s \u201cBoth Sides Now,\u201d a tear-jerker of a tune about the losses and gains of growing up, shifting perspectives, and leave-taking, the lyrics of which promise to be similarly on-the-nose: \u201cTears and fears and feeling proud\/To say \u2018I love you\u2019 right out loud.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please excuse me while I restock my Kleenex, no matter my familiarity with (and qualms about) this already-told tale.\u00a0\"\"\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the Sundance hit \u2018CODA\u2019 landing on Apple TV+ this week, we look back at the French film \u2013 seldom seen in America \u2013 that inspired it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":622,"featured_media":16967,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1399],"tags":[1422],"class_list":["post-16965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-looking-back","tag-looking-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/622"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16965"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22212,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16965\/revisions\/22212"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}