William Hurt, lean and handsome and focused, is forced to rely heavily on his frustrated good guy persona here, playing teacher at a school for the deaf who is appalled that a brilliant young deaf woman is also working at the school--but as a janitor. She's rebellious (and won't speak because of childhood traumas), he argues with her in sign language while speaking for himself and for her (for the audience's benefit), and they go around and around. It's like a deaf variation on "Two For the Seesaw". Marlee Matlin has a plum role here, and won a Best Actress Oscar, yet the arch of her character is rather dull--she's much more amazing at the beginning than at the end (she's softened, necessarily, by the film's built-in sentiment, but how far has she come? She still won't speak at the finale). The kids in Hurt's classroom are a fun, colorful bunch, and the picture has many romantic-but-edgy passages that keep it interesting, yet it's still quite tiring by the end. **1/2 from ****