Sign a silent film

One of stories so simple than, at first sigh, the temptation is to say than it has not subject. or only a blank love story. with its steps, levels, beginning, troubles, gestures. but not words. after its end, you understand. it is more. a story about solitude. and hope . one of stories easy to ignore. because seems be an ordinary one. but, on screen, it could change you. your perspective. and, maybe, about the meanings of love.

"Sign" took me by surprise: I expected something corny, littered with stereotypes or banal prejudice. Instead, what I got was a story that compressed into a breathtaking short movie what the usual romantic films need at least 90 mins to accomplish. It's a love story that starts in an unassuming encounter that's defined by the sign language the two men need to communicate. The passion evolves into something so profound that the other one decides to learn sign language in order to create a bond without communication barriers. The view with no sign language proficiency might find the storyline occasionally puzzling, but the scenes of the two men's social life that swings between the one's sensorily unimpaired friends and his own, where the other one feels like a stranger. It's a perfect metaphor for problems we encounter in our own communication-sensorily impaired or not. The director of this little gem teaches us that sometimes, the barrier of speech is easier to mend than an emotionally impaired heart. And that it's never too late unless we decide it is.

It's difficult to know where to start or what to say about SIGN. At its heart, this is a film about relationships, about falling in love, about finding your place in the world.

But it's also so much more, it's about communication, it's about frustration, it's about pain and it's about redemption and hope. Mostly, it's about love.

That the film has no spoken dialogue until the very end would, you'd think, make it difficult to understand, but it doesn't. Not knowing American Sign Language also doesn't make it hard to understand. Everything you need to know can be seen on the screen as Aaron and Ben meet, fall in love, have problems, split up, try to move on but, eventually, come back to each other.

It is, simply, beautiful.

And, in the spirit of full disclosure, I was a backer of the film, not a huge amount of money, but I am so glad I did something to help this film get distributed.

Being deaf should not exclude someone from life and this film is simply a love story.