Children of a Lesser God

Those whom we set free we cannot hope to own. That's the message of Mark Medoff's stage hit, which he and Hesper Anderson have adapted for the screen in a way which opens out its dimensions without ever clouding its intentions or enervating its tensions. Hurt is James, a likeably unorthodox teacher of the hearing-impaired, who becomes attracted by Sarah (Matlin, a stunning debut), a pupil who left the school with little more than a large chip on her shoulder and a knowledge that sex doesn't require too much of a conversational manner. Their relationship is both a genuinely touching love story and a clever gloss on the barriers and extensions of language. It also contains a truly didactic other-dimension which points out some very salutary things about our often unintentional slights towards the deaf, without being either a simple sob or an issue story.