Cinema
Little Voice (15, selected cinemas) The Opposite of Sex (18, selected cinemas)
Voice over?
Mark Steyn
In Follow the Fleet (1936), there's a scene where Fred Astaire has to rehearse an Irv- ing Berlin number, 'I'm Putting All My Eggs In One Basket', on a battered old upright. Astaire was not a vain man, at least not by the standards of Hollywood stars, but he was an accomplished pianist and he wanted to show the audience he was playing the song himself. So in the film he checks over the piano, doesn't like what he hears and removes the front panel to tune one of the strings. Then, with cigarette dangling, he breezes jauntily through the song and we see all the ham- mers moving — i.e., no post-production dubbing.
Astaire's tuning trick wouldn't make any difference today: with computer technolo- gy, you could 'paint in' the moving ham- mers afterwards. Sixty years on, plugging Independence Day on the David Letterman show, Will Smith demonstrated the new school of film-acting, sitting in his chair looking left and right, now startled, now tri- umphant, now ducking ... Everything else — the jet, the missiles, the space monsters, the blue sky and fluffy clouds — is added later, when Smith's long since moved on to his next 'acting' gig.
In other words, in motion pictures there's no premium on reality. So why make Little Voice, a film of a stage trick? The original play, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, was written by Jim Cartwright for Jane Horrocks, a terrific vocal mimic who's also a fine actress — a very rare combina- tion. So Cartwright concocted a tale to show her off — the story of a nondescript, almost mute northern wallflower trapped in both her dingy attic room and a kind of psychological prison, from which she breaks free only when she's singing along in the eerily accurate voices of Judy Gar- land, Billie Holiday, Shirley Bassey and other stalwarts of her late dad's LP collection.
On the London stage, Miss Horrocks was a tour de force, but only because it's hap- pening now, it's happening live, 'she's doing it before your very eyes a few feet away, and it's thrilling. On film, it doesn't thrill: shrinking the title to Little Voice, director/adaptor Mark Herman has some- how managed to shrink Miss Horrocks's performance, too. On the screen, a show- stopper is just another scene — who's to say that fabulous Garland voice isn't some session singer dubbed in afterwards or even Judy herself digitally tweaked? You shrug, and the film moves on to the next scene.
Herman has dispensed with much of Cartwright's stagey, artificial dialogue (no great loss), and instead, in the great tradi- tion of misconceived stage adaptations across the decades, has opened up the play. But, like so many stage works, Little Voice's power derived from its sense of claustro- phobia, with Laura — Little Voice — up in her room, refusing to respond to her mum bellowing from downstairs: suddenly, in this poky little attic, Shirley Bassey booms forth.
Herman, striving for the same sense of place that made his adaptation of Brassed Off such a treat, lets his cameras roam the grotty streets of Scarborough seeking visual comments on Little Voice's housebound existence. So Billy the shy BT repairman (Ewan McGregor in non-sexy hair) now raises pigeons — and thus (as Maya Angelou would say) knows why the caged bird sings. But somehow, in all these filmic distractions, Little Voice seems, well, lit- tler. And in replacing the stage play's rela- tively anonymous supporting cast with the semi-glittering likes of Michael Caine (in full scenery-chewing mode), the film's act- ing seems a lot stagier than the play's. I came away feeling sorry for Jane Horrocks but heartened that there are still some things so purely theatrical they defy this age of digital marvels.
By way of contrast, The Opposite of Sex offers a great film role. You may remem- ber Christina Ricci as the moon-faced girl from The Addams Family a couple of years back. She's been out of sight for a while I thought I spotted her in The Man in the Iron Mask but it turned out to be Leonardo Di Caprio with long hair — so this is her first grown-up movie (she's now 18). She plays a piece of Louisiana swamp trash who heads north to stay with her gay brother, winds up getting pregnant by his boyfriend, complications ensue, etc. Miss Ricci's char- acter is that favourite Hollywood pulled- punch — tough as nails on the outside, but only cuz she's so vulnerable deep-down. That way, she gets to say some ostensibly shocklingly non-politically correct things about fags, Aids and so forth, but not so much that we cease liking her. The film's not half as smart as it thinks, but, from her first snide voiceover Of you're one of those people who don't like movies where some person you can't see talks the whole time ...'), Miss Ricci swanks through the picture wiggling her cartoon curves, and announces she's arrived.
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