TIFF 09: IF I KNEW WHAT YOU SAID Review

Nina is an aspiring rock star. Kiko is a deaf dancer. And the idea of the two of them hooking up in a Filipino teen-romance will probably provoke as many rolls of the eyes among those reading this as Nina herself delivers in the film's opening act. Which is rather a lot, really. And, honestly, in the early going If I Knew What You Said deserves exactly that kind of impatience and exasperation, the characters barely more than stock, the scenario playing in to every possible stereotype of bad television melodrama. The look is cheap, the script cliché, the acting weak.

But then something strange happens. At about the twenty minute mark the film starts to work. It's as though the actors suddenly become comfortable in their own skin and let their true personalities through, a good and appropriate thing on more than one level since Zoe Sandejas (Nina) really is an aspiring singer-songwriter and Romalito Mallari (Kiko) really is deaf and a member of an all-deaf dance troupe. If I Knew What You Said is essentially a fictionalized version of Mallari's own story and while the fiction part may stumble and stagger, the real-life part proves to be inspiring in the broadest, most crowd pleasing sense.

Nina is a problem child. A big time problem. As prone to sneaking out at night to live out her rock star ambitions as she is to lashing out violently when things don't go her way, Nina begins the film by landing herself in the local police station after getting involved in a brawl at one of her own shows - a brawl that also involved deaf dancer Kiko. And though the pair fail to meet at the police station their time will come soon.

As a consequence of this latest violent outburst Nina is suspended from school, her explusion avoided only by agreeing to participate in a camp made up of both deaf and hearing youth - the idea being that it would force all involved to find creative ways to communicate with each other. And it is at the camp that we learn the true extent of Nina's troubles, violence in her home triggering frightening flashbacks that she can only block out with alcohol and music.

And Kiko? Kiko is there, too, but as a leader of the camp, an aide to the director who has been Kiko's teacher from childhood. And Kiko has had a tragic life as well, abandoned as an infant due to his disability he has been raised as an orphan, dreaming of one day finding his real parents while working away at his studies and indulging his love of dance and music - the latter of which he can feel as vibrations if the volume is turned up loud enough.

Music proves to be the meeting point for Nina and Kiko, the common ground that allows a relationship to slowly form between the two of them, a relationship that forces Nina to rethink her own approach to life. And, yes, in the early going particularly If I Knew What You Said plays out purely by the numbers, hitting all of the marks that you would expect it to, several of them quite clumsily. It plays things in the broadest way possible with Nina, in particular, quickly wearing out her welcome. It is more than a little tedious, more than a little obvious in the way it handles itself. But then ... then it gets away from the purely fictional aspects of the story and more and more involved with the actual events of Romalito Mallari's life. And those are anything but predictable and obvious, Mallari himself proving to be an engaging performer and a true underdog who you just want so badly to succeed.

An unrepentant heart-tugger, If I Knew What You Said is a pure, feel-good, triumph of the human spirit film. It is an ode to what is possible if you simply try, a reminder that differently abled really is a better moniker than disabled. And, at the end of things, it actually resists the urge to make everything sweet and nice, injecting a surprising shot of realism and difficulty, refusing to gloss over the fact that life is hard. And after a very rocky beginning it ends in a place sure to draw cheers. A surprising little crowd pleaser.