It would require a heart of anthracite not to be charmed by this touching, warm documentary on the challenges of life as a deaf person in a sometimes unsympathetic world.
Garry Keane has faced uncompromising realities in earlier films such as Gaza and In the Shadow of Beirut, but he is, on balance, in optimistic mood here. Three couples tell three stories. Each endures trauma. Each looks to have found a way of balancing hope and challenges.
John and Agnes, Protestant and Catholic raised in the worst years of the Northern Irish Troubles, explain how being part of a deaf community eventually helped break down those wider barriers. Their story is all the more touching for being depressingly familiar. Separated early on by concerned relatives, they subsequently bump into one another as adults and kick off a relationship that still thrives decades later. “In our day Catholics and Protestants were killing each other, not falling in love,” one says.
Kathy and Michelle, now living in England, address their decision to have children by IVF and recall their conversations when one was born hearing and the other born deaf. Theirs is one of two stories that brushes gently against the notion, controversial in the deaf community, of fitting cochlear implants to induce a degree of hearing.
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Seán, who already has such an implant, has, after a troubled past, found a kind of redemption through boxing, but, supported by admirable hearing partner Deyanna, he is now facing up to a life-altering decision. To secure a professional licence, the Dubliner requires a MRI scan, but this is not possible for someone with the cochlear device. Lose his limited hearing or abandon a redemptive ambition?
Much at home to slow motion, melodically scored by Stephen Shannon, the film, to hearing audiences, offers a strangely soothing experience.
There is, of course, little spoken conversation. Along the way, those of us shamefully ignorant of the subject will get an education. I was not aware, as explained by John and Agnes, that British and Irish sign language were so different that children schooled in one had trouble understanding the other.
Some may baulk at the sweetness of it all, but cinemagoers are, particularly at this grim time of the year, allowed a degree of unapologetic positivity. A deeply humane piece commendably fond of its charming subjects.
In cinemas from Friday, February 6th
