Boy meets girl at a training session for the Deaflympics swimming competition. Boy falls in love with girl, whose sister is the one aiming to swim for the Deaflympics. One small hitch: girl is dedicated solely to making sure that elder sister qualifies, and has no wish to hang out with boys.
Okay, you get the idea: it’s a very conventional romantic comedy, with just one small difference. In Hear Me, boy and girl communicate solely in sign language, MSN (Microsoft Web Messenger), and text messaging. Because of their unique circumstances, the smitten Tian kuo (Eddie Peng) woos Yang-yang (Chen Yi-han) through entirely non-verbal means. You have to read their body language to know where the relationship is going, and I guess through the subtitles as well.
Wisely enough, Zheng Fenfen’s screenplay is aware that these two mechanisms are insufficient for the movie. The Deaflympics does make a great sub-plot involving elder sister Hsiao you (Michelle Chen) and her dreams of making it big, and the drama between her and Yang yang. On the romantic comedy front, Taiwanese veterans Lo Pei-an and Lin Mei-hsiu are charming as Tian kuo’s down to earth parents, providing the necessary comic relief between the sibling’s drama and the serious toned romantic plots.
But what about a romantic comedy conducted mostly without spoken words? This constraint has resulted in the cast having to rely entirely on their sheer acting skills and experience. Perhaps more importantly – and ultimately more appropriate to its status as a “Deaflympics” inspired movie – is how the handicapable, in this case the deaf culture is conveyed and celebrated by the depth of the performance and sincerity of the cast, as well as through the sensitivity of the screenplay.
And that’s sufficient to make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.