Stimmen

Although the other reviewers of Voices seemed to have liked it, I found this stagebound drama to be a bore.

While on a boating vacation, a young boy disappears. He is assumed to have drown. The boy's parents (David Hemmings and Gayle Hunnicutt) were making love when the boy wandered off, so a strong feeling of guilt hangs over the surviving couple. Claire, the mother, eventually has to be committed after trying to kill herself. Just out of the hospital, the husband, Robert, has taken her to country to get away. While in the hospital, Claire inherited a country manor. The house is dusty and a dense fog hovers outside the house. However, the atmosphere is more chilly between the couple, who repeatedly reopen old wounds. Then, there is the matter of the voices that Claire is hearing in the house. Is the house haunted or is her illness back or is there something else going on?

Admittedly, I started watching Voices thinking it was a horror film, which it is not, but I had a hard time finishing the film, in spite of its short running time. Based on a play, Voices is a talkfest where a couple bickers endlessly until there is a surprise ending, and this one does not seem too surprising any more. Admittedly, David Hemmings and Gayle Hunnicutt are both fine and any interest that I had was because of their performances, but, after a while, I just wanted them both to shut up. I will confess to not liking movies (or plays) like this. I did care much for The Pumpkin Eater or Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? either. Viewers with more patience for that type of drama may like Voices more than I did.

Rather dreary British-made ghost story involves a bickering couple hoping to restart their marriage after a long period of mourning over the death of their child, who drowned while on a family outing at the lake. The wife, who later slashed her wrists and was institutionalized, blames herself and her husband for their son's accident (they were making love instead of watching him), while the husband feels the past is dead and it's time to move on. After the wife inherits her aunt's isolated estate, the shaky twosome drive out to the fog-enshrouded countryside to spend some time together, but she is unnerved from the moment they arrive--and is alone in hearing a child's giggle coming from the next room. Quite obviously adapted from a play, this talk-heavy piece hits an early wall in the first act with the husband (David Hemmings) making numerous attempts to warm up his spouse (Gayle Hunnicutt), while she alternately invites his advances and pushes him away. The material might have been more tolerable if the set wasn't such a gloomy eyesore--and if Hunnicutt's character wasn't so impossibly mercurial. For those who stick with it, there's a plot twist in Act Three that is successfully pulled off, although it renders much of the rest of the picture pointless. George Kirgo and Robert Enders (also the producer) adapted Richard Lortz's play, which ran on Broadway for a scant eight performances. ** from ****

'Voices' (1973) - Kevin Billington.

Following the tragic death of their only child, husband (Hemmings) and grief-stricken, suicidal wife's (Hunnicutt) attempts at reconciliation following her prolonged stay in a mental hospital prove disastrous, since their choice of dilapidated getaway country manor, isn't quite as abandoned as it initially appears. 'Voices' translates well from stage to screen, due in no small part to the very fine acting of real-life power couple Hunnicutt and Hemmings, with Hunnicutt bringing enormous depth and pathos to a complex and challenging role. Shot on film and video, which demonstratively lends 'Voices' a unique, if initially jarring aesthetic, while I'm quite sure it was unintended, this singular approach recalled Brian Clemen's macabre masterclass 'Thriller'. Dissimilar in many ways, there are, perhaps, shared eerie tonalities with 'Images', 'The Innocents', 'Symptoms' and 'Don't Look Now', that strongly recommends Kevin Billington's captivating 'Voices' to those appreciative of nuanced acting, dramatically sound film-making, and artful, slowly scintillating supernatural suspense.

A protracted stage play on what looks like low grade videotape bookended by film sequences to remind you what the rest of it should have looked like. Unnaturalistic dialogue that goes absolutely where you expect, delivered with a generous helping of ham. My interest was piqued momentarily when I realised that the child playing John was in the tiger segment of Tales That Witness Madness, and there is a soupçon of guilty curiosity in watching Hemmings and Hunnicutt perform as a bickering couple in the knowledge that their real life marriage was at that time falling apart. Otherwise this is a colossal waste of everyone's time. Move along...

An unsual film. Good first act. Great last act. The middle act, shot on videotape, is essentially one long scene of the two characters arguing, apologizing, and arguing again. It feels very much like a BBC adaption of a stage play, and is relatable but reptetive.

However, stick with it; the scenes of what may be either ghosts or hallucinations become increasingly frightening, leading up to a shocking climax where we find out exactly which they are.

Gayle Hunnicutt's does wonders with her haunted gaze, and the fog-shrouded country house location has a nicely ynderstated atmosphere of isolation and dread.

Comparisons to Don't Look Now are apt; there are also similarities to 2001's The Others.