Movie Review: Signs of Love

 

Michael's Movie Grade: A-

A beautiful and moving film. 

Despite the title is movie is so much more than your typical romantic comedy. This is a beautifully powerful and often heartbreaking character study. Our main character is a drug dealer but does not view himself as a bad person. The way he sees things is that he doesn't make anybody take his drugs, so he has no responsibility for what happens to them. Yet when he falls in love with a beautiful woman (both inside and out), he doesn't feel worthy of her in any way. What I love about this film is that the charter is never shown to be a completely good person or a completely bad person. He is just a person, with a great share of faults but also some real good in him as well. This movie makes the character feel likable and relatable, while never shying away from darkness of his actions. This is not to say that the romance is anything less than fantastic though. There is a wonderful chemistry between these two characters and the two actors (Zoë Bleu Sidel, Hopper Penn). You truly grow to care about this relationship and hope that everything ends up happy for both of them. I also love how her being deaf, is never the focus of the film. They have a beautiful relationship and that one can hear and one can't has very little effect on their relationship. This is not the only major relationship in the film though. There is also the relationship between the main character and his drug addicted dad. There is a very complex relationship between the two that is quite well realized and can range from hostile to touching while always feeling completely real. This movie may deal with darker subject matter than you might except from the title, but it does this beautifully. There is no sugarcoating of these moments and some of them are so emotional that they can be hard to watch. Yet this movie balances these darker moments with moments of joy and great humor. It does this perfectly without ever feeling forced.  

This is the feature film debut for director and writer Clarence Fuller, who has directed some short films as well as music videos (for such artists as JoJo, Azealia Banks, Cosmic Gate, Rixton and Pharell). I hope he continues to make feature films as great as this one in the future. 

Simply a must see.