Hear Me is a triumph. A modest one, and not without some annoying flaws, but a triumph nonetheless. The third film from Taiwanese director Cheng Fen-fen (Keeping Watch), Hear Me is - at least on the surface - a simple romantic comedy about a delivery boy and the deaf girl he falls for. While it still displays Cheng's unfortunate weakness for characters that act more like stock archetypes than believable human beings, it's still a wonderfully heartfelt film that manages to work in a surprisingly effective message without ever coming across as insufferably preachy.
Tian Kuo (Eddie Peng, All About Women, My So-Called Love) is a genial twenty-year-old living with his parents, running deliveries for their restaurant, biking boxed lunches all over the city. He often stops at the local swimming pool, dropping off orders for the team of deaf athletes who train there.
One day he notices Yang Yang (Ivy Chen), a pretty young deaf girl who follows the team to cheer on her sister Xiao Peng, who's hoping to make the cut for the forthcoming Deaflympics. Tian Kuo's instantly smitten, and he's got a good command of sign language, so he tries to strike up a friendship with Yang Yang, hoping it'll lead to something more.
But Yang Yang has her hands full looking after her sister. With their father out of the country, the younger girl has to balance the books herself, working odd jobs, scrimping and saving, desperately hoping Xiao Peng makes the team and scores a trophy. They need the prize money almost as much as Yang Yang wants to see her sister's dreams come true.
It becomes obvious fairly early on we're in full-on romantic comedy mode, in that on one level Tian Kuo and Yang Yang beggar belief. He's possessed of that kind of cinematic devotion which teeters on the edge of becoming a creepy obsession (when Yang Yang won't return his IMs he invents conversations they've supposedly had), and she's a suffering saint whose every desire is sublimated by the need to make sure her sister can keep on swimming.
But both of them are just too nice not to root for, even if they sometimes feel too nice to be entirely real. Tian Kuo grates on occasion, but he still comes across as decent, openly distressed at the thought he might have hurt Yang Yang in some way. Eddie Peng's mugging tends towards the broad, but overall he's worlds away from his performance in the trainwreck that was My So-Called Love. Ivy Chen is even better. The actress manages to give Yang Yang a blend of altruism and stubborn naivete that's instantly charming, for all her character smacks of something Cheng Fen-Fen dreamt up to keep the plot going.
Indeed, the main reason Hear Me works so well is the outright fantastical elements are never far-fetched or strained enough that the basic premise of boy meets girl loses its impact. The characters are straight out of a first lesson in scripting fluffy romantic comedies, but their lives are sufficiently low-key and their dreams relatively modest enough their relationship seems like something genuinely special.
Their hardships are hardly cinema verité, but they still mean something. Tian Kuo worries his parents might have a problem with him dating a deaf girl. Yang Yang and Xiao Feng confront each other, with the older girl angry she's defined by her sister's unquestioning support to the point she feels anything she does, she does for Yang Yang before she does it for herself.
In one sense, these are undeniably platitudes, and Cheng overuses them to the point they do drag the film down somewhat, but the cast still throw themselves into the script so whole-heartedly it's hard not to warm to it regardless. Most of the dialogue is delivered in sign language, and the accompanying body language sells the emotion almost as much as the performances. The sisters' heart to heart may arguably be childlike and simplistic but only the most dyed-in-the-wool cynic could fail to be moved by it.
Ultimately, though the ending might seem pat on paper, with everything a little too convenient, in practice it never comes across that way. Hear Me is a message movie, but it's a worthy message that both cast and crew work hard to deliver, to the point it seems outright mean to object you're being educated. It may not be the most technically accomplished production and it's frequently a little too on the nose to be a great film but it's so good-hearted, so earnest, so much plain fun it's still an easy one to recommend.