“THE TRIBE” My rating: B
132 minutes | No MPAA rating
“The Tribe” is a foreign language film, but not in the way we’re accustomed to.
Set in a rundown school for the deaf in Kiev, Ukraine, this feature from writer/director Miraslov Slaboshpitsky offers not a word of spoken dialogue. The cast members — all deaf — converse in sign language. There are no subtitles.
Which means that viewers had best pay close attention to what happens on the screen. You can’t let your eye wander and expect the soundtrack to fill in the blanks.
“The Tribe” blends the boarding school movie — in which a new kid struggles to fit in — with a crime drama. Perhaps more important, it gives us entry to an insular environment in which young people band together to deal with a hostile outside world that they view with anger and contempt.
We witness all this through the eyes of the new kid (Gregory Fisenko). We don’t know his back story, where he came from or why at this relatively late stage of his education he finds himself in this particular institution. Perhaps he grew up in a rural area and now requires intensive study and immersion in deaf culture before entering adult life.
What he gets mostly is an immersion in crime.
Apparently lacking adult supervision except in the classroom, the students run their own dormitories and have built a small criminal empire. Attractive girls are driven out to a truck stop to earn cash from prostitution. Groups of deaf kids mug and beat pedestrians — especially if the victims have just paid a visit to a liquor store. There’s a suitcase filled with plump plastic bags — evidently drugs of some sort.
The new kid observes these goings on, endures a couple of beatings as a sort of initiation, and is gradually admitted to the criminal ranks. He seems to have no moral compass — indeed, none of the students do — and quickly adapts.
But he makes the mistake of falling for one of the coed hookers (Yana Novikova). For the cynical girl he’s just another trick, but for the new kid — delirious after his first sexual encounter — it’s much more. Now he’s willing to betray his confederates to ensure that he and his dream girl have a future together.
Butler's Cinema Scene 