The Bélier Family

Éric Lartigau’s film did not start from an invention. Véronique Poulain, 15 years an assistant to Guy Bedos, was the hearing daughter of two deaf parents, and her account became the core of the script Bedos’s daughter Victoria Bedos wrote with Stanislas Carré de Malberg. Paula’s choir works through the Michel Sardou songbook, and her audition piece, Je vole, is Sardou too. The casting argument is less one sided than usually passed on. The mother and father are played by hearing actors, Karin Viard and François Damiens, but Luca Gelberg, who plays Paula’s brother Quentin, is deaf. Viard and Louane learned sign language with a deaf teacher. Julia Pelhate of Websourd aimed her objection less at the actors than at the language: at the Toulouse preview on 31 October 2014 the deaf audience fell back on subtitles, unable to follow the signing on screen. The film sold 7,450,944 tickets in France, and Louane Emera won the César for most promising actress, one of 6 nominations. It has been refilmed twice: the American CODA in 2021, an Italian version in 2026. A good fit if you can take a deaf family used for tenderness and for jokes in the same scene. Not for anyone who needs the sign language on screen to hold up on its own terms.