In The Way We Talk, the lead actress, Chung Suet-ying, won Best Actress at the 61st Golden Horse Awards but unfortunately lost the same award at the 43rd Hong Kong Film Awards. It’s a pity; one might prefer to have no award at all than to receive one that others feel is undeserved. While we lament Chung Suet-ying's natural performance, The Way We Talk also reveals the challenges faced by issue films in Hong Kong. As director Johnnie To said, issue films are like Below the Lion Rock, but the challenge lies in how to engage with social concerns while maintaining artistic integrity and cinematic tension to persuade the audience.

From my perspective, The Way We Talk effectively uses its cinematic language to portray the world of the deaf. Not only does the sound design allow us, as hearing people, to experience what the deaf "hear," but it also addresses a common question: Do blind people see only darkness? The answer often involves concepts like "emptiness" or "nothingness," which are hard to grasp. The film expresses "nothingness" through its sound design. It uses the vibrant underwater world to depict the realm of the deaf, suggesting that they do not lack sound; rather, sound is something that can be seen. Isn’t this the artistic essence of film as a visual medium?