Little Voice (1998)

I wanted to but couldn't!

Captivating movie !

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

When LV, "laura", (Jane Horrocks) gets on the stage and really does her stuff, we see talent that she seems to have hidden in all her other roles. Such a pity? Playing the funny but very silly Bubble in Ab- Fab is a distraction? (Mo, in "Born Romantic" is much better?)Here it is hard to believe this is the same Jane! And then she retreats into the strange fantasy world. With such a flimsy story, the movie has to include various trivial scenes just to fill out the time, ie, Billy (Ewan McGregor) and his pigeons, and then there was the blousy, brassy mother, Mari who is awful - gosh it must take really good skills to act that stuff? They get a telephone installed. Great, that fills up a few minutes and provides a few feeble laughs. "You must be the famous Phone Bill". yerss. The house has appalling electrical wiring, cue sparks, blackouts, and later a fire. The dead father gets a few minutes too.Michael Caine's role is sleazy show promoter. Nothing special there. Same for all the others?

This movie baffles me. First, it seems to be several different movies. It begins with some laugh-out-loud humor from LV's bizarre mum. I was all set for a very weird comedy. Then LV is introduced. I did not react to her the way other reviewers seem to react. To me, she bordered on mental illness -- refusing to speak, refusing to react, hiding herself away in her room like a recluse with only her records and the memory of her dead father as company, afraid of the world. If I hadn't already read the plot, I probably would've stopped watching, but of course I knew that Jane Horrocks ("LV") would eventually sing, so I kept watching and waiting. (And waiting, and waiting, and waiting...) The movie quickly became a rather morbid drama. Michael Caine was way over the top as the guy who decides that LV's voice is his ticket to wealth, and suddenly the plot becomes his desperate effort to force LV out of her isolation and into the glare of a stage. It was totally unbelievable to me that a girl who panicked at the mere thought of leaving her little cave would suddenly agree to step in front of an audience and sing. Then the movie becomes yet another movie, a story about an almost autistic but hugely talented girl who abruptly breaks free of her fears and performs like a pro, belting out this song and that (yes, Jane Horrocks did sing all those songs herself), in a "bring down the house" performance that was, I'll admit, thrilling and wonderful. But what does she do then? Does she use this sudden great talent to escape from her miserable life? Does she at last become happy and successful, or even try? No. She mumbles and mutters something about "they told me once, they said one time," and throws her career away at the snap of a finger, preferring (according to the movie) to help a strange young man exercise his pigeons, so that the movie ends as a third kind of movie, some sort of deep literary exercise that's neither entertaining nor satisfying, just baffling.

I didn't really want to see this film in the first place - that's why it's taken 8 years . You need to be in the right frame of mind to appreciate many films, otherwise they just don't "click". But it was quid pro quo for the crappy sci-fi and horror and offbeat "arty-type" films I like to watch occasionally. From all I'd heard about the singing, I thought this film was going to be a musical. So when I realised this wasn't a musical, had Jane Horrocks, Michael Cane and Jim Broadbent in it, I thought it couldn't be all bad. The film seems to have been accepted as a real peach. Sadly it's not, but instead more of a curates egg - good in parts. The singing is good - but not exceptional enough to carry the film on it's own. Michael Cane puts in a very classy performance, and Jane Horrocks certainly does a job with the lines she was given. Jim Broadbent has a marginal, but significant role. Ewan McGregor, does OK with his 5 minutes but his character's involvement after the first 10 minutes seems to be a bit of an afterthought. Annette Badland, is a really excellent actress with a wide range(Archers and Dr Who fans will know this), and was wasted on this part, though she plays it well. Brenda Blethyn must have been told "play an actress who is hamming up a performance as a busty irritating Hilda Ogden on speed". If so, she did a very good job. Somehow it just felt as if they had rehearsed their roles separately, and the director has then taken the first cut on every shoot to get it over with as quickly as possible. Even though I wasn't expecting much from this, it feels like this film could have been so much better than it turned out to be. All in all not a bad film, but somehow it's much less good than the sum of the performances - frustratingly disappointing.

I thought that "Little Voice" was one of the most fascinating movies of 1998. Obviously, the idea of someone overcoming obstacles is a common theme in movies, but the strong performances here easily keep this one afloat (but hey, when does Brenda Blethyn give a weak performance?). Jane Horrocks (happy birthday, Jane!) plays the title character, a soft-spoken, timid young woman still living with her mother (Blethyn). But when an agent (Michael Caine) discovers that she has a great singing voice, he intends to help her make something of herself...no matter what has to happen in the process.It's the sort of movie that - without getting sugary - makes you feel as though you've just flown through paradise. They got everything right in laying the flick out; and besides, how often do we get to hear the "Goldfinger" theme song? Anyway, I definitely recommend it. Also starring Ewan McGregor and Jim Broadbent.