A winner at Cannes, Miroslav Slaboshpitsky’s coming-of-age drama isn’t like anything you’ve seen before. It is set in a Ukrainian school for the deaf and all of the main characters communicate in sign language. From the minute new boy Sergey (Grigoriy Fesenko) walks into a classroom we realise we’re on our own (there are no subtitles). Luckily, bodies speak a thousand words.
We soon discover that the school is a hotbed of corruption. The steadicam cinematography is elegant and assured; the details grim but telling. Two girls from the school are being pimped out to local truckers; one of the teachers ferries them to the car park, like an indulgent dad dropping his kids at gymnastics.
Admittedly, there’s something weird about paying more attention to gestures than words. Slaboshpitsky, it could be argued, is implying that what's being discussed isn’t worth translating, which, given the marginality of the characters, is vaguely disturbing (imagine an Englishman filming an African drama and, when he showed the footage to an English audience, not providing subtitles; that would definitely seem insulting).
There are other problems, like the incredibly implausible ending. Yet the story of Sergey and the two girls remains powerful. A bout of semi-intimate sex, an horrendous, backstreet abortion... these characters seem to exist at one remove. Their isolation, ironically, feels all too close to home.
Cert 18, 130 mins
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