By I suppose when I wound up selecting specific films to cover at this year’s New York Asian Film Festival, I had societal consciousness on my brain. Similar to both Montages of a Modern Motherhood and MA – Cry of Silence, The Hearing, from director Lawrence Fajardo, is a film with a particular axe to grind about systemic structures that fail to help those suffering. For once, the description on NYAFF’s website doesn’t spoil the overarching theme, which left me suitably shocked when it played out before me.
This will be a difficult review to write without revealing that twist, if you will, but it is important to what The Hearing is trying to convey. It also means that viewers who have either suffered similar abuse or know someone who has will probably not be able to watch this film. Fajardo doesn’t go for graphic depictions, thankfully, but even thematic discussion of certain actions will probably be too much.
Let this be a trigger warning for the following subjects: sexual abuse, violence against children, and degradation of women. To sum up my thoughts quickly, I hope that The Hearing will be remembered as a film that pushed for societal change in a country that readily needs it. There are some issues with plot devices that go nowhere, but otherwise, it is a tough watch that delivers a call to action for a suffering nation.
The Hearing
Director: Lawrance Fajardo
Release Date: August 3, 2024 (Philippines), July 21, 2025 (NYAFF)
Country: Philippines
In terms of its general plot, The Hearing focuses on the plight of a deaf and mute boy named Lucas (Enzo Osorio) who gets raped by a local priest, Father Mejor (Rom Factolerin). Lucas’ mother, Madonna (Mylene Dizon), has him report the crime to the closest police station, which is a boat ride away from the remote village she lives in. The station initially has trouble with this as there aren’t many sign language interpreters around, but eventually that is settled, and the case goes to court some months later.
The Hearing is a pretty easy film to break down because its narrative isn’t the main bit that screenwriter Honelyn Joy Alipio is trying to convey. The big gimmick with this film is that at seemingly random points, it will shift to Lucas’ point of view and deliver the film in silence. This happens mid-conversation in some scenes, and it creates a claustrophobic atmosphere that is meant to help viewers embody Lucas’ perspective. At first, it’s very stark and a little upsetting, and I was wondering if the whole film would be simply actions instead of words. Instead, we cut back and forth between the other characters, so there is spoken dialogue.
It’s definitely an interesting gimmick, though I think by the end that the randomness of it all feels more incidental than anything. Entire segments will go by where Lucas’ perspective is never shown, and while I understand the shift to courtroom drama for the second half is intentional, it also seems that the rules The Hearing establishes for its storytelling weren’t deliberate. I have to wonder if it was a happy accident in the editing phase more than a specific quirk, but nonetheless, it can be effective at times.
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What does make this film work is how plain it can be at times. That might sound like a complaint, but as the audience is forced to sit through the court proceedings in the middle, there’s a certain “matter of fact” quality to how everything is delivered. It’s actually kind of boring, which highlights how dehumanizing the court system can make victims feel. The editing doesn’t try to spice things up with dramatic zooms, and the writing never has people arguing for the sake of drama: this is just a raw courtroom spectacle with no distraction from the arguments being put forth.
One tremendous aspect here is that the film doesn’t shy away from the defense attorney being a scumbag. While Father Mejor is clearly the “antagonist” of the film, his legal counsel comes off as a total scumbag. He consistently undermines the intelligence of not only Lucas but also Madonna, and there’s a moment towards the end where he pretty much calls her a complete idiot to her face. You could describe this as the standard procedure in any court case, but the scene works as a highlight of how the legal system often fails individuals.
The same is said of when Madonna has Lucas initially report the crime, though this is more specific to Filipino culture. As the film concludes, there is a startingly lack of support services for disabled individuals in the Philippines, with the claim that for every social worker, there are maybe 60-70 deaf children. At the very beginning, we see another deaf child in court who was an eyewitness to a murder, but her testimony is thrown away because of extenuating circumstances. It almost leads you on to think that Lucas’ struggle will be an absolute failure.
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What doesn’t work so much is the B-plot here. Centered on a social worker named Maya (Ina Feleo), the film initially brings her into the picture by showcasing a rough family life that she has. Maya deals with the failings of the court system every day, but then comes home to an abusive husband (Mark Dionisio) who treats her like property. After conversing with her deaf aunt one night, Maya heads to bed, and her husband proceeds to rape her. Later at work, she’s pretty distant from her co-workers, and it seems like she is losing faith in the system that she operates within.
While there is clearly meant to be a parallel to what Lucas is going through, the film just forgets about this plot for the entire movie until Maya winds up being the court-mandated interpreter for Lucas. Even then, nothing comes of her story from before, and the film ends with her finding out her husband was cheating the whole time. There might be some kind of social commentary I’m missing there, but Maya is a throwaway character that winds up not reinforcing The Hearing’s central thesis or its pointed commentary on society. None of the blame lies on her actress, who does a solid enough job. The writing just fails her arc.
Speaking of acting, I think child star Enzo Osorio is pretty tremendous in this. Since this role requires him to act with his face instead of voice, he’s forced to convey the devastation and depression that a kid would suffer after being molested by a trusted official. When you first see him crying when going to his mother, it genuinely shattered my heart as I completely understood his pain. There are other moments in court where he freaks out when Father Mejor enters, and it’s simply painful to watch. The rest of the cast doesn’t quite live up to that, but everyone is convincing enough in a naturalistic way. It’s really only the lawyers who feel kind of odd, being that they are speaking in English for most of the trial.
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I’m also not entirely sure I understand why the film was edited with the framing being almost exclusively centered. In a lot of the dialogue sequences, characters will be dead center of the screen and speaking to one another as if stuck in a vacuum. While it makes sense for Lucas’ perspective as he likely has tunnel vision from trying to read lips, every other moment can result in some uncanny looks from the cast. Every now and then, the widescreen format will be properly utilized, but the majority of The Hearing has an intimate style that can feel alarming more than anything. Perhaps it is intentional.
Even with some of my issues, I left my viewing of The Hearing feeling emotionally drained. I suffer from depression, so I sometimes get stuck in my head about how awful things are around me. Seeing a film like this helps to drag me back to reality where I am in control of my own fate. Some people don’t have that luxury, and I wish I could help give them a better life. No one deserves this kind of agony, and it really is the institutions that carry influence who are the ones to blame. Things need to change for the better, and a film like The Hearing delivers that message in a sometimes-messy manner, but one that should prove effective to people who still have a soul left.
