There are incredible, moving, positive stories that we would never tire of listening to or watching. Like the one told nothe film just made available on the Netflix platform, We don’t need wordsstarring the young singer-songwriter Sarah Toscano in her acting debut, and Serena Rossi in the role of her singing teacher.
The plot
Born to a pair of parents, Caterina and Alessandro, who were deaf and mute, as was her brother Francesco, sixteen-year-old Elettra has always taken charge of her family through her voice. Every day he helps the family communicate with the outside world and manage daily activities, taking on a central role in their lives. Once she discovered her talent for singing, her teacher Giuliana encouraged her to undertake a more advanced musical path, which would lead her to move away from home. Eletta must thus face the difficulty of reconciling her dream with the needs of her family. If this story seems familiar, you are not wrong. He was the first to tell it the French film The Bèlier family (2014).
The true story and the French film
The film is based on un autobiographical book written by Véronique Poulain entitled Les mots qu’on ne me dit pas (“The Words They Don’t Tell Me”). The author is the hearing daughter of two deaf parents, Jean-Claude and Josette Poulain. He was a worker, she was a typist, but when Véronique was fifteen they decided to found a theater for the deaf, in which she also sometimes acted. She then continued to work in the world of entertainment and for 15 years was the assistant of Guy Bedos, a famous French actor and comedian.
Véronique Poulain’s uncle, Guy Bouchauveau, born in 1944, and her mother’s brother, was also deaf. In 1980 he began a successful career as a sign language comedian and toured his one-man shows in France, Europe and the United States: he quickly became very famous in the deaf world. He participated in the film entitled The Abbé de L’Épéedirected by Michel Rouvière, in which he played the protagonist abbot. Starting in 1986 he was hired as a French sign language guide at the Cité des sciences et de l’industrie in Paris, where he was the first deaf mediator and remained there for eighteen years, until his retirement in 2004. He passed away in 2016
Véronique Poulain’s autobiography was the starting point on which the screenwriters then built a story where the drama is tempered with lightness and irony. In the film the protagonist Paula was played by Louane Emera, former contestant of the French edition of The Voicewho had learned sign language for the film and had won the César Award for Best Promising Female.
The American remake
The Bélier family it then inspired an American remake, TAIL – The signs of the heart, released in 2021 and winner of three Oscars (best film, best adapted screenplay and best supporting actor to Troy Kotsur as the protagonist’s father). In this film the actors are deaf (while the protagonist Ruby, played by Emilia Jone is not) and act in American Sign Language.
