Marjane Satrapi bought her fame with the formidable “Persepolis”, one of those books that promoted comics at the most serious artistic level, a largely autobiographical story describing the author’s childhood during the Islamic revolution in Iran. After bringing this book to screen into an excellent animated film, Satrapi began a career as an actors feature films director, experimenting in different genres. ‘The Voices‘ made in 2014 is the result of one of these experiments. It’s a movie that may mislead if you look at the poster and even after watching about a quarter of it. It starts as a sweet romantic comedy in an American town. It continues in something completely different, gloomy and decadent, and those who are afraid of spoilers should better stop reading here. Fans of political correctness and those who are really scared by horror movies can also give up. The rest are invited to join the adventure.
The story takes place in a very typical American town, where the main attractions are the bowling alley and the burgers and Chinese restaurants. Jerry (Ryan Reynolds), the hero of the film, works in a factory that packs something in big boxes, stacks them and ships them. Jerry looks good, he’s a nice guy, the girls in the accounting and finance departments compete to be chosen by him for a date, and even his weirdness of talking loud with his dog and cat its (very cued pets, by the way) when coming home does not seem something to worry about, after all this happens all the time in the Disney studio movies. Maybe we should be a little worried about his regular visits to the psychologist, but she (excellently played by Jacki Weaver) seems more psychotic than her patient, a situation which often happens in reality. For me at least it was a surprise when the story went crazy. Really badly crazy.
I liked the way Marjane Satrapi tells the story. It’s a black comedy, a horror movie packaged as a romantic comedy with talking animals. When the romance and the voices of the animals turn out to be the visions of a serial killer, the viewer understands that everything until then was a very well executed convention. Fragments of reality are interspersed, but the vision remains that of the hero. If we are to look for a classic reference, then it would be Hitchcock‘s ‘Psycho‘ if it had been filmed from the perspective of Norman Bates. Even when blood starts to flow, we are not allowed to completely enter the horror mood because it’s then only that the romance between Jerry and Lisa begins, and Ryan Reynolds and Anna Kendrick are the perfect actors for a romantic comedy. The cinematography and the sets are excellently designed, and the bowling alley on the floor of which the hero’s home is located has a chance to become a cult film setting. Don’t make the mistake of leaving viewing when everything seems to be over, because the ending and the credits provide another commercial packaging for the horror story, that of a musical. Is the musical ‘The Voices’ in preparation for Broadway? I would not be that surprised.