| "Beyond Silence"
By Andrew Curry
The Miami Herald
Weekend section, Friday,
October 2, 1998
Parents are
supposed to take care of kids. And that, generally, is the way things work.
Not in "Beyond Silence," though. The German film, which won ``best picture''
at the Tokyo and Vancouver film festivals, turns that notion on its head
with powerful results.
Writer-director
Caroline Link presents an unconventional family: two deaf parents (Howie
Seago and Emmanuelle
Laboritt) who rely on their
willful daughter Lara (Sylvie Testud) to help them navigate the hearing
world.
The movie is
filled with comic moments -- like a parent-teacher conference that gets
extremely muddled as Lara translates things to her own advantage.
At the core
of the film, though, is a tough question: How much does a child owe one's
parents?
When Lara is
given the chance to pursue a talent for music -- a dream her parents cannot
understand -- the film moves to a powerful conclusion as Lara deals with
her torn loyalties. |
