Watch | 29. Mar 2022

Pick Up Your Dream

I was pretty sure I would never watch that movie.

Not that I did not like the coming-of-age story about a girl with the desire to sing deeply aware that her dream would offend her deaf family. I had also read all those praises and noticed the awards the cast had already gained for their performances. On top of that, "Coda" makes a pretty strong Oscar contender for best picture this year.

But I had watched the original version "La Famille Bélier" some years ago with so much respect and emotion that to me it felt like betraying those people. The young Louane, a French singer with a very special biography herself, broke my heart playing Paula, and for the first time I understood that tricky lifestyle of a child having been born into a deaf famliy: How you NOT learn how to speak from your parents - but instead copy her limited language skills in the beginning. How you become the first interpreter of the family, like it or not, and how you will always be an outsider within your inner circle as well as with others.

CODA ("Child Of Deaf Adulds") is your term then - but your fate is something else.

Then again you have the same fate as every other teenager who grows up to leave home. In the original version the final song underlines that mission: "Je vole" talks about the desire to fly away even though you love the ones you have to leave behind.

I watched the remake last night and I have to say it is also good, kind of more universal even. Like, more people might like to watch it because it plays in a world that is more familiar.

Either way - you can still watch the French original on Youtube or go for the American version on apple.tv - listen carefully to what family and friends have to say about love and loss. About the way we treat each other, how we accept different opinions and life choices.

And how to follow the old saying of Diana Ross: "Pick up a dream and work on it" as the smartes advice for everyone in their teens.