I knew little about this film when I saw it at the Philadelphia Film Festival this afternoon.
For the most part, Universal Signs works when it sticks to the world of the deaf characters and how they deal with the world including such mundane tasks as being awoken by an alarm clock (the alarm is silent, but a light flashes) to how they deal with panhandlers who pretend to be deaf, something any major city dweller has come across more than once.
Where this film fails is when it abandons those bits and attempts to force a melodramatic plot point onto the story in some misguided hope that an audience's familiarity with the cliché will translate into a better understanding of the soundless world of the deaf. This is naïve on writer/director Ann Calamia's part and nearly ruins her wonderful film.
I am not deaf or hearing impaired, nor is anyone in my family, so for me, watching our handsome leading man negotiate his normal workaday was the fascinating part. How does a deaf person handle it when a hearing person continues talking to him without realizing they are speaking to a deaf person; when do you spring that information on the person?
How does a deaf person deal with other people thinking they are rude because they don't answer when spoken to or ever acknowledge a door knocking or the phone ringing?
What do deaf people sign about when us hearing people aren't looking? This is the interesting stuff and early on, Universal Signs delves into that world with a bravery and gusto that could have made this film a break through, like an Annie Hall for the deaf.
Consider the plus's, we have a charming leading lady in Mary, played by Sabrina Lloyd, who while not exactly copying Diane Keaton, has the kind of loopy intelligence and humor that shines right through her shy, awkward smile.
The hero, Andrew is played by a very charismatic actor named Anthony Natale who reminds me of a pre-Sundance Kid Robert Redford, right down to the blond hair and broad shoulders. This guy is good and can express more intelligent thought with his eyes than most actors can with a two-page soliloquy.
In fact, the naturalness of the leading actors coupled with acutely observed scenes of them dating that are held in long takes where we see both actors completely and all their conversations from the romantic to the dull are presented in sign language with subtitles. While this may limit the films appeal to a general audience, as a veteran of countless foreign language films, I had no trouble following the story or the events.
It was very brave of director Calamia to eschew most all of the extraneous sound (except in flashbacks) and to totally wrap us in the deaf persons world. I learned a lot about deaf people that I never would be able to experience any other way, short of losing my hearing, but hey, that can happen from injury or infection; no guarantees in this world.
But when the writer (I blame Calamia's script more than her direction) decides to force a secret guilt onto our hero; she makes him be the person responsible for the death of his fiancées daughter, which terminated their engagement.
It's a dumb plot point that is originally only alluded to in colorful flashbacks where we even get to hear Andrew speak in that way deaf people sometimes speak where their words are over-enunciated in a slightly indistinct monotone that is very endearing, (no letters please, I mean this in a lovely way).
But apparently, writer Calamia feels it's not enough to just allude to this past episode. Director Calamia hits us over the head with it and it is so shamefully cliché, even Louis B. Mayer would have been too embarrassed to think an audience would swallow it. Likewise the dumb tacked on ending showing Andrew and Mary with a three-year-old kid of their own, presumably after they get married is not needed.
Still, the good far outweighs the bad in this film. There is a wonderfully dysfunctional Easter Dinner with Mary's family where individual tempers flare but it's all done with sign language. Margot Kidder steals this section of the film in a much too short cameo role as Mary's mother who is a sassy, signing, drunkard who cops a feel of Andrew's butt after admiring his muscles that just brought the house down.
If this film is not yet locked, lose the fake happy ending and stick with everyone making friends at the bar as the final shot and please, please, please trim the excessive bits of the fiancée's daughter drowning as a way to give Andrew a guilt complex.
Really, Andrew has enough sorrowful motivation on his plate already because of his disengagement with his own mother shortly before her death from cancer, his own dissolved engagement as well as his giving up his art school dreams for work in the computer field. That's enough; you didn't have to kill the kid as well.
For the most part, Universal Signs works when it sticks to the world of the deaf characters and how they deal with the world including such mundane tasks as being awoken by an alarm clock (the alarm is silent, but a light flashes) to how they deal with panhandlers who pretend to be deaf, something any major city dweller has come across more than once.
Where this film fails is when it abandons those bits and attempts to force a melodramatic plot point onto the story in some misguided hope that an audience's familiarity with the cliché will translate into a better understanding of the soundless world of the deaf. This is naïve on writer/director Ann Calamia's part and nearly ruins her wonderful film.
I am not deaf or hearing impaired, nor is anyone in my family, so for me, watching our handsome leading man negotiate his normal workaday was the fascinating part. How does a deaf person handle it when a hearing person continues talking to him without realizing they are speaking to a deaf person; when do you spring that information on the person?
How does a deaf person deal with other people thinking they are rude because they don't answer when spoken to or ever acknowledge a door knocking or the phone ringing?
What do deaf people sign about when us hearing people aren't looking? This is the interesting stuff and early on, Universal Signs delves into that world with a bravery and gusto that could have made this film a break through, like an Annie Hall for the deaf.
Consider the plus's, we have a charming leading lady in Mary, played by Sabrina Lloyd, who while not exactly copying Diane Keaton, has the kind of loopy intelligence and humor that shines right through her shy, awkward smile.
The hero, Andrew is played by a very charismatic actor named Anthony Natale who reminds me of a pre-Sundance Kid Robert Redford, right down to the blond hair and broad shoulders. This guy is good and can express more intelligent thought with his eyes than most actors can with a two-page soliloquy.
In fact, the naturalness of the leading actors coupled with acutely observed scenes of them dating that are held in long takes where we see both actors completely and all their conversations from the romantic to the dull are presented in sign language with subtitles. While this may limit the films appeal to a general audience, as a veteran of countless foreign language films, I had no trouble following the story or the events.
It was very brave of director Calamia to eschew most all of the extraneous sound (except in flashbacks) and to totally wrap us in the deaf persons world. I learned a lot about deaf people that I never would be able to experience any other way, short of losing my hearing, but hey, that can happen from injury or infection; no guarantees in this world.
But when the writer (I blame Calamia's script more than her direction) decides to force a secret guilt onto our hero; she makes him be the person responsible for the death of his fiancées daughter, which terminated their engagement.
It's a dumb plot point that is originally only alluded to in colorful flashbacks where we even get to hear Andrew speak in that way deaf people sometimes speak where their words are over-enunciated in a slightly indistinct monotone that is very endearing, (no letters please, I mean this in a lovely way).
But apparently, writer Calamia feels it's not enough to just allude to this past episode. Director Calamia hits us over the head with it and it is so shamefully cliché, even Louis B. Mayer would have been too embarrassed to think an audience would swallow it. Likewise the dumb tacked on ending showing Andrew and Mary with a three-year-old kid of their own, presumably after they get married is not needed.
Still, the good far outweighs the bad in this film. There is a wonderfully dysfunctional Easter Dinner with Mary's family where individual tempers flare but it's all done with sign language. Margot Kidder steals this section of the film in a much too short cameo role as Mary's mother who is a sassy, signing, drunkard who cops a feel of Andrew's butt after admiring his muscles that just brought the house down.
If this film is not yet locked, lose the fake happy ending and stick with everyone making friends at the bar as the final shot and please, please, please trim the excessive bits of the fiancée's daughter drowning as a way to give Andrew a guilt complex.
Really, Andrew has enough sorrowful motivation on his plate already because of his disengagement with his own mother shortly before her death from cancer, his own dissolved engagement as well as his giving up his art school dreams for work in the computer field. That's enough; you didn't have to kill the kid as well.