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Big talent >> Little Voice is a perfect gem by MATTHEW HAYS
There were efforts to revitalize the form: Scorsese failed with New York, New York, one of his most expensive but commercially unsuccessful endeavours; Alan Parker failed with Evita, as did Woody Allen with Everyone Says I Love You. For the record, the last musical box-office bonanza came with Grease, a freak hit itself draped in nostalgia for a time gone by. What sheer delight, then, to discover Little Voice. Director Mark Herman seamlessly interweaves the film's narrative (based on a hit London play) with various musical numbers. While by no means in the Busby-Berkeley vein, this is undeniably a musical, with toe-tapping, heart-wrenching results. The film's centrepiece is Jane Horrocks, who plays L.V. (Little Voice), a young lass harangued and horrified by her overbearing and crass widowed mother (Brenda Blethyn of Secrets and Lies). Trapped in a tiny British working-class town, Horrocks (perhaps best remembered as Bubbles on Absolutely Fabulous) so terribly misses her late father and is so terrified of the world she shuts it out with a record collection made up of every classic diva imaginable (Bassey, Judy, Edith, Billie and Marlene among them), retreating to her room to escape into their performances. Horrocks hangs on the singers' every word; Blethyn intrudes at every possible inopportune moment. Little Voice's turning point comes when Blethyn brings home her latest conquest, a manager/loser played by Michael Caine. When the gold-chain-wearing Caine--who plays sleaze almost too well--overhears Horrocks singing an impersonation of Judy Garland, he can't believe his ears. A star, he decides, has been born, and this act is the one that's finally going to make him a winner. To give away much more about Little Voice could only be deemed an unforgivable crime. Though the film has an intelligent, bittersweet script, bang-on direction and a universally superb cast, what's most striking about it is Horrocks' dead-on impersonations of every chanteuse she takes on (none of the music is dubbed--that's Horrocks' voice on every track). Jim Cartwright's stage play (mounted six years ago) also starred Horrocks, and--thank goodness--the filmmakers didn't try to recast the lead role with someone better known, younger or someone thought of as more marketable. Instead, Horrocks is allowed to fill the role to perfection, an astute mix of Tennessee William-sesque pathos and Garlandian stamina. Horrocks has already garnered a Golden Globe nomination for her performance here, and an Oscar nod is due. Indeed, a star is born. Little Voice opens Friday, January 15
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For those of us who've yearned for a decent musical, the past couple of decades have been rough. The genre marched out of popular culture in the late '60s and '70s, when it appeared that audiences were no longer willing to suspend their disbelief for characters bursting into song in mid-narrative.