Boy meets girl; boy (unfairly) loses girl; and after assorted trials and tribulations the two are blissfully reunited. The standard romantic formula hasn't changed, but here it benefits from a unique perspective: he can hear, she can't. William Hurt is the overconfident teacher of deaf students trying to convince Marlee Matlin (against her better judgment) that silence isn't golden, and the tensions of attraction between them make for an often absorbing romantic drama. Oddly enough the film, so otherwise sympathetic to the needs of the hearing impaired, is top heavy with verbal rather than visual expression. Notable exceptions (disregarding the obvious aquatic sex sequence: only in a movie can people undress with such ease and grace underwater) include the scene in which Hurt becomes the odd man out at a party conducted in sign language, and a later moment when he unwinds to the music of Bach while Matlin site alone and oblivious in the background. Considering the logistical problems of the scenario (for example how to communicate to an uneducated audience a conversation held entirely in sign language) the film is nevertheless an uncomplicated tearjerker that hides its stage origins well. The partially deaf Matlin is impressive in her debut, while Hurt performs like an actor self-consciously aware of the camera's presence, affecting an artificial naturalness which he drops only during the more fiery lover's quarrels, when the couple shows just how passionate and expressive hands and faces can be.
Review of Children of a Lesser God
