Philibert's documentary has many contributors but two distinct stars, so to speak - the fiftyish Jean-Claude Poulain, a teacher of French sign language, and pint-sized Florent Desjardins, a grade school boy taking his first tremulous steps towards having control over his life. The two, who never interact onscreen, could not be more different. Bald and bearded, Poulain is a born performer, a comedian and philosopher, whose face and hands never stop working the air while the wide-eyed, fragile-looking Florent is seen, early on, at the point of tears as his emotions overwhelm him in class. The film crew follows Florent's progress as he masters French sign language and a limited facility for speech, which Philibert punctuates with glimpses into the lives of other Deaf people, who tell their stories to camera and share their daily lives: family meals, visits to the Louvre, marriage ceremonies, apartment-hunting, performance and in tear-streaked airport farewells with friends. The stories are as informative as they are heartrending: of Deaf school children in decades past whose hands were tied behind their backs to prevent them from using sign language, of a 15 year-old girl whose handicap prompted her parents to institutionalize her with the insane, and of another young person who never saw a Deaf adult until a trip to school in America dispelled early concerns that all Deaf people died before they were twenty.
Released in France in 1992, In the Land of the Deaf made the festival circuit throughout the decade and earned a Peabody Award in the United States in 1998 when it was broadcast on public television. When the film was given a Region 2 release by Second Run DVD in the United Kingdom in 2005, it was presented in anamorphic 1.66:1, with a brief introduction by Nicolas Philibert. For its Region 1 debut from Kino International, Philibert's intro has been dropped (as has a supplementary essay by American film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum) and the original aspect ratio is rendered at a tighter but never ruinous 1.85:1. Kino's disc, like the film itself, is bare bones, stripped down and essential; there are no extras. The image is clear but has the grain and denatured color palate of its source materials. Kino's English translation (rendered in optional subtitles) is new but also sparse, translating only what the filmmakers feel is necessary in telling this story, keeping the viewer at a slight disadvantage to approximate the necessary and often exhilarating discomfort that attends the birth of a new language.
For more information about In the Land of the Deaf, visit Kino Lorber. To order In the Land of the Deaf, go to TCM Shopping.
by Richard Harland Smith
