Looking Out To Sea

I suppose there are plenty of mediocre films which have won an award or two, but it’s rare to find a film that’s generated so many awards and is so uniquely bad. I recently had the dubious honour of being introduced to just such a film — Children of a Lesser God.

It is a romance: a study of the relationship between a “hot-shot” speech therapist moving to a deaf school in New Brunswick, and a deaf woman who works at the school.

It fails to impress on nearly every point that it makes an effort — as a romance, as a statement about deafness and as entertainment. The characters are either uninteresting or hateful. I could find no redeeming features in the leading man. I could see no reason why the leading lady would want to have anything to do with him.

Some points in particular really rubbed me the wrong way. The treatment of ASL, both as a language and as an important part of the characters’ identity, was downright shoddy. Many of the shots were framed so that the signer’s hands were offscreen msot of the time. There were no subtitles for the signed speech. Instead, the leading man provided a tedious running commentary whenever someone signed to him. As if we didn’t hate him enough, we now have to listen to his voice for all the other characters too!

For some reason the two main characters fall for each other. The reason for their affection remains a complete mystery to me. I would guess that she is the ultimate difficult student for him, while he is a suitable target for the anger she feels as an outsider. How all this translates into romance is a complete mystery to me. Their relationship seems to be based entirely on mutual antagonism. But unlike stories like The Shop Around The Corner it seems utterly unlikely that the animosity is just a front. They really do hate each other.

It seems the film was adapted from a play. I only hope the play wasn’t nearly as bad as this.