Jan 5, 2000

A Look at... Little Voice - THE COMMENTARY

By Joseph Planta

VANCOUVER - The British have always made good movies. They also have pretty good actors. From the great Olivier to people like Judi Dench, the Redgrave’s and the list goes on... I finally got to see Little Voice, and there’s not picture like it. It was originally staged by Sam Mendes, who’s wowing audiences on Broadway with his inventive revival of Cabaret, and the world of film with his direction of American Beauty, a film that’s going to make its way to the Shrine at this year’s Oscars.

Mendes found this character in a play that he conceived and cast the remarkable Jane Horrocks as Little Voice. Little Voice revolves around a British family of two. A mother and a daughter. The daughter being Horrocks, and the mother played by the delightfully wonderful Brenda Blethyn; who was nominated for an Oscar for this role. Little Voice is a young woman, who’s awfully silent. All she has in life are her late father’s records of Billie Holiday, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland and Shirley Bassey. Blethyn plays a sluty mom, who’s trying to bed every bugger she can get her claws on.

Now LV (Horrocks) has some sort of anxiety disorder which makes her painfully scared of people. One day a sleazy talent hack, played bloody good by Michael Caine, who won a Golden Globe for this role, gets Blethyn’s claws on him. One day while trying to get it on, he hears LV sing. Not only sing, but sound remarkably like Judy Garland. The opportunist that he is, he wants to book LV into show biz. But remember she’s painfully shy. Watch the movie for the rest of the story, and do note that Horrocks herself performed all of the songs in the voices of those great stars. She imitated, dead on, Judy Garland, Shirley Bassey, Marlene and Marilyn.

The story moves on and the film does too. It’s tremendously good, and not terribly long. Its a charming tale that breaks your heart and, at the same time lifts your spirits. It’s got a terrific score that’s the best of all worlds with them old tunes by Sinatra, Shirley Bassey and of course, Tom Jones. (I said it was a British movie.) Little Voice is one of the best films of 1998. It’s very good, funny, sad and a terrific story that touches all the bases. Little Voice is at your local video store.

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