Little
Voice
Reviewed
by Leonard Heldreth, November, 1999
This little film is full of big
performances. Based on a successful play entitled The Rise and Fall
of Little Voice, it was created to showcase the mimicry talents of
Jane Horrocks (Bubble in the TV series Absolutely Fabulous), and as
the play and film demonstrate, they are well worth showcasing. The
film is essentially another variation of talented children triumphing
over destructive parents, as in Shine, but the variations are interesting
enough and the acting so solid that it works.
The plot is fairly straight forward with obvious complications.
LV (her name—short for Little Voice) is a young woman so overwhelmed
by her crude and boisterous mother that she seldom speaks. Instead,
she retreats to her room and plays the old vinyl records that her
deceased father collected when he operated a record store in a run-down
section of London where they live. She not only plays them, she has
learned to mimic them perfectly—Judy Garland, Shirley Bassey,
Marilyn Monroe, Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, Marlene Dietrich. But she
does her songs only in private in her bedroom for the memory of her
father.
Her mother brings a talent scout home one night to scout
her talent in bed, and he accidentally overhears Little Voice singing
and recognizes his meal ticket to the "big time." The problem
is trying to persuade her to sing in public. With some coaxing, she
does agree to sing for one performance, and it's the peak of the film,
but even then she sings only when she sees the ghost of her father
sitting in the audience. Add in the attentions now being paid to LV
by a young telephone lineman, the further attentions of a major television
booker, and the plot becomes sufficiently complicated. How all of
this settles out to a conclusion where people more or less get what
they deserve (or perhaps a little worse) occupies the last part of
the film.
While the plot is acceptable, although a little predictable,
and the characters—with the exception of LV—are only a shade
this side of stereotypes, the performers manage to bring them alive
and flesh them out into what are almost bravura performances. Mari
Hoff, the mother, is played by Brenda Blethyn (Academy Award for best
actress in Whispers and Lies) and she obviously has a great time with
the part. Mari is tasteless, crude, vulgar, over-the-hill, over-dressed,
loud, boisterous and perpetually on the hunt for men. Blethyn takes
this role way over the top and to within an inch of caricature, and
yet makes us care for this sad, unsympathetic, selfish person. Her
scene dancing with her overweight friend from across the street, who
falls over the couch and nearly destroys it, exemplifies the tawdry
aspect of the film.
Matching Blethyn in a sleazy and yet ultimately sympathetic
role is Michael Caine, demonstrating his ability to make a two-bit,
on-the-make talent scout named Ray Say into someone that we hope can
avoid the debt-collectors who are waiting for him. Caine does a tour-de-force
song at the end of the film as his world comes crashing down.
Jim Broadbent brings some individuality to the cheesy
nightclub owner Mr. Boos, who tells jokes no one wants to hear, and
Ewan McGregor, in his last role before the Star Wars prequel, plays
a supporting part as a telephone lineman who raises pigeons and is
attracted to LV.
But the person for whom the role was written and the one
who gives the bravura performance that makes the film well worth seeing
is Horrocks as LV. She is so mousy and shy and squeaky in the earlier
third of the film that when she first sings and Judy Garland comes
alive, it's amazing. These are no lip-sync performances. During the
stage run and in the film, Horrocks does all of the songs, and the
sounds of Billy Holiday, Dietrich, Piaf and even Marilyn Monroe seem
to come effortlessly from her lips complete with trademark stances
and gestures. It must be seen to be believed.
While the plot is a little creaky and some of the characters
are so broad as to almost be stereotyped, see the film for Horrocks'
performance. It's stunning.
