Sign

"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.