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LITTLE VOICE Send This Review to a Friend
Yes, that's Jane Horrocks doing her own singing in "Little Voice" and when she takes the stage and regales us with her impressions of Judy Garland, Shirley Bassey and other stars the quirky film soars. She is one talented lady, whether singing or acting. The story itself is less impressive.
Based on Jim Cartwright's play "The Rise and Fall of Little Voice," the film version directed by Mark Herman concerns the sullen, withdrawn daughter, nicknamed Little Voice, of an overbearing, tacky widow in an English seaside town. The daughter's cocoon is her upstairs bedroom, where she wistfully stares at a photo of her late father and spends hours listening to records and imitating the voices of her favorite singers.
Parallel plotting involves her mother, flamboyantly and amusingly played by Brenda Blethyn, and her relationship with a loser of a talent promoter, played by Michael Caine, as well as the adoring attention heaped on Little Voice by Ewan McGregor as an impressionable telephone repairman. Caine never gives a bad performance, and here he rises to the task of making the promoter a desperate character who focuses on Little Voice as his big hope while insincerely romancing her equally desperate mother, worth bedding but not wedding.
Herman manages to evoke the seedy environment convincingly, but fails to work up enough pathos for Little Voice, no matter how exploited she is. It's all more strange than moving, and the story pulses to a melodramatic, contrived climax. Instead of sensitivity there is excessive shrillness and "Little Voice" winds up being one of those interesting offbeat films that needs to be better. But Jane Horrocks is a special attraction on her own. A Miramax release.
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