LITTLE VOICE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: A woman's over-powering personality
ruins her own life and the life of her talented
daughter. Brenda Blethyn and Jane Horrocks give
strong performances in a downbeat look at English
lower-middle class life. Rating: 6 (0 to 10), high
+1 (-4 to +4)
A big personality can push out of the way all personalities around it. Mari Hoff (played by Brenda Blethyn) is a woman with a big personality and a big voice. When she enters a room she squeezes out just about everybody else. Both her best friend and her daughter are nearly mute in her overpowering and frequently vulgar presence. It is not that she has any intelligence to spread around but she dominates all about her by verbally overpowering them. One of the few people who can get a word in when talking to Mari is Ray Say (Michael Caine). He is an entertainment promoter well past his prime, but who denies the truth even to himself. He promotes pointless acts that are more pitiful than entertaining. Still, Ray has big plans that obviously are of little value even to Ray. He is convinced he can still strike it big if only he can find some great talent right here in his own neighborhood.
Mari's daughter Laura (Jane Horrocks), living with Mari, has almost given up the struggle to talk. On the rare occasions when she even bothers to speak it comes out at a squeaky tiny voice that has earned her the nickname "Little Voice." Laura has retreated from the world dominated by her mother and into a world of daydreaming of her dead father, now nearly elevated to the status of saint in her own mind. She listens over and over to his records of Marilyn Monroe, Shirley Bassey, and especially Judy Garland. Unknown to anyone while Laura has almost no voice of her own she can borrow and even sing in voices of Garland, Monroe, and Bassey in perfect voice impressions.
One night when Laura is listening to the beloved Judy Garland records and Ray is visiting Mari the power goes out. Ray hears the music stop, but strangely Judy Garland's voice continues to sing. Suddenly Ray realizes that "Little Voice" may have real talent that he can exploit to find some real success. But can he get Laura to come out of her shell? And if she does come out, can Mari stand to see someone else in the family getting attention?
Jim Herman wrote the screenplay and directs a film based on the play "The Rise and Fall of Little Voice" by Jim Cartwright. Blethyn and Caine each give performances so earthy one almost feels dirty just watching them. Each is totally self-absorbed. Caine at least is aware enough of how he is perceived that he can control himself. Blethyn's character is so self-absorbed that she does not even think of appearances. Horrocks is so victimized that she seems to be retreating into autism. Ewan McGregor is present as a young telephone installer who is the first person since the death of Mari's husband who really cares for Laura. While reminding the viewer that there are still normal and decent people in the world, he is a little too good to be true. It is never clear what he sees in Laura whose personality qualifies her for the walking wounded.
LITTLE VOICE is a downbeat look at English lower-middle class standards. The little neighborhood nightclub, Boo's, is seamy and tawdry, even if there is little that we see that is explicit. If LITTLE VOICE really is a comedy, it is a dark one and one full of people whom one is happy to be rid of at the end of its 100 minutes. Much of the plotting of LITTLE VOICE is predictable, but the performances are raw and realistic. This is a side of England most of us would rather do without. I rate the film 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1999 Mark R. Leeper
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews