MARCO NG, NEO YAO IN THE WAY WE TALK

ADAM WONG: THE WAY WE TALK (2024) New York Asian Film Festival 2025

A very compelling film from Hong Kong about the importance of sign language to deaf people

In the 2024 Hong Kong film about deaf people The Way We Talk Adam Wong, cowriting and directng his sixth feature, is dramatizing an issue that hopefully is going out of existence. The invention of cochliar implants (CI) led to a banning of sign language at deaf schools, which has been compared to the wiping out of native language at North American and Australian that sought to erase their culture. It was believed (falsely) that with sign language the deaf world would invade the hearing world that deaf people were trying to enter by CI, which enabled them to learn to talk and understand speech. (According to a [url="https://www.pbs.org/video/why-sign-language-was-banned-in-america-bpyzwv/"]PBS short[/url] featuring gay deaf Gallaudet University President Roberta Cordano, we'd all be smarter if we learned sign language as well as oral language because it stimulates other parts of the brain.)

In is generally favorable [url="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/jun/09/the-way-we-talk-review-sensitive-drama-explores-deafness-via-three-friends-infectious-warmth"]Guardian review,[/url] (three out of five stars), Phuong Le comments, "Like many films dealing with social issues, The Way We Talk is not without its moments of didacticism." That's a big understatement, because this entire film is governed by its didactic purpose. But Phuong is still right that this is compensated for by the fact that an "easy chemistry" between the three lends an "infectious warmth," though though the latter phrase sounds a bit self-conscious. The point is these actors are deaf people. We're glimpsing their world, and that's more potent than the didactic purpose, no matter how overriding that is.

There's nothing like the little scenes at the opening between the two small boys who wind up getting severely dressed down by the teacher for having a little chat in sign language. Needless to say, sign language lends itself particularly well to talking during class, also to fun little chats, bursts of enthusiasm. I said something like this in a review of Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy's (2014 [url="https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3012"]The Tribe[/url], whose scenes acted by young Ukrainian deaf people seemed over-emphatic and mimed, adding that "sign language seems itself to involve much over-emphatic gesturing."

But who am I, after all, to say what sign language is like? Clearly it's different from spoken language, and closer to mime. We the hearing may never know what it's like to be deaf and fluent in sign language, talking with good friends - though we could certainly get to know more. What we do know is that sign language exists exclusively for the deaf, and doesn't involve sound. A different world. A deaf world. That's why it's so important to deaf people. It's reveling in being different, in being who one is. Sign language may be the key reason why deaf people have a passionate sense of solidarity.

The Way We Talk uses sound effects for the hearing audience to convey different degrees of deafness, as Darois Marder's 2019 [url="https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4561"]Sound of Metal[/url] does to show the musician rapidly losing his hearing. The Way We Talk deftly switches degrees of distortion and sound levels to convey what different deaf people in a single scene are hearing or not hearing. This is particularly telling for CI sound, which varies in quality, with newer devices working better. and some surgeries more successful than others. After a spate of creaky CI sound, when a character removes her implant device and sets it on a table to think, we're overwhelmed by how beautiful and peaceful the silence, her silence, is. We see how entering "our" hearing world with Cochleal implant sound can be entering an ugly world.

The film's trio of protagonists are Alan, Wolf, and Sophie. Alan and Wolf are the two little boys in the opening scene (then played by Wong Wai Hang and Cheng Chun Hei). Wolf is the little boy who rejects CI and learning to talk. He revels in sign language, defiantly refuses the teadher's order not to use it in class. Grown us Wolf (Neo Yau, a hearing actor who learned sign language for the role) is still friends with Alan (played by first-time deaf actor Marco Ng), but they've gone different ways. Wolf is notable for his physicality and wouldn't want an office job even if his reliance on sign language didn't bar him from that. He is working for a car washing business and loves the water. He lives in a van. His passion is to go to diving school, but unfortunatrely is barred from that by the school's lack of a signing interpreter. Sign language really works particularly well under water. Sophie (as a child Law Hei Yi, adult Chung Suet Yang, also a hearing actor) is a poster child for CI, making a video for it that angers some for conrasting deaf with "normal" and saying some day with Ci "there will be no deaf people."

Alan, as planned early on, is a CI user and along with Sophie (Chung Suet Ying) and both are ambassadors for the implants and their use to aid in functioning in the hearing world and using speech. But Alan and Wolf as young adults still talk in sign language and have great fun with other young deaf people doing so. After going to uni and entering the corporate world as an apprenticde actuary,Sophie, whose mother barred her from learning sign language in the belief that it impedes learning hearing communication, now sees what she's been missing and wants to join the party. While Alan is closer to her and Wolf adversarial, Wolf begins giving her lessons in Alan's presence. One gets to feel a bit what it's like to be Sophie - and with the rest of her life too.

The film begins to be about entering a career, Wolf with diving school issues, Sophie stumbling at work because her CI malfunctions. She needs new surgery but is reluctant to get it, and starts to see herself as only a "mascot" at the insurance company. She begins to identify with Wolf. We follow the two of them as they both face conflicts with the hearing world and triumph in their own way. Alan is neglected a bit, his trajectory not made as interesting as Sophie and Wolf's.

This is an engaging film. We won't forget that opening with the two little boys delighting in sign language then getting punished for it. Things meander a bit toward the end. Mightn't some deaf people object that two of the three main actors aren't deaf? But a valuable contribution to the subject nonetheless.

The Way We Talk 看我今天怎麼說 ("Let's see what I have to say today"), 132 mins., in Hong Kong Sign Language andCantonese with English subtitles. Produced by Louis Koo's One Cool, it premiered at BFI London Oct. 12, 2024, releasing theatricfally in Hong Kong Feb. 20, 2025, with seven Golden Horse nominations and Best Leading Acress won by Chung Suet Ying. Screened for this review as part of the July 11-17, 2025 New York Asian Film Festival. Showtime:
Sat, July 19
6:00 PM
Q&A Walter Reade Theater
Ticket holders are invited to the Furman Gallery for Matsuri to Midnight after the screening and Q&A end.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.