Other Voices Other Rooms
USA 1995
Reviewed by Rob White
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Thirteen-year-old Joel rides a bus to Noon City in the deep south of the US. He remembers how a letter had arrived at his aunt Ellen's house in New Orleans from his long-absent father summoning him to live in his mansion at Skully's Landing. When he finally reaches the house he meets his aunt Amy and cousin Randolph, but there's no sign of his father. He befriends Jesus Fever, the elderly servant, and Jesus' daughter Zoo, as well as Idabell, the fiery daughter of the neighbour. He discovers his paralysed and autistic father in an attic bedroom. It was Randolph who wrote the letter.
Amy steals the letters he tries to send to New Orleans while Randolph slowly captivates him with stories of Cuba and his futile love for Pepe (whom Randolph writes to, care of all the world's capital cities). Jesus dies. Zoo runs away but returns after she has been raped and beaten in the road. Joel and Idabell run away but return when Joel is bitten by a snake. Aunt Ellen visits, bringing Joel's things which Amy hides. Joel finds them and confronts a drunken Randolph who confesses to shooting and paralysing Joel's father. Joel leaves Skully's Landing.
Review
Other Voices, Other Rooms was Truman Capote's first novel, published to enormous acclaim in 1948 (when the author was only 24). Told from the point of view of Joel Sansom, a 13-year-old boy uprooted on false pretences in order to stay with relatives in the deep south, it's a claustrophobic chamber piece, part gothic saga of family secrets, part coming-of-age memoir. It was always going to be a difficult novel to adapt to the screen. Lacking the film-friendly premises of In Cold Blood (1967) or Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), it's more purely a writer's book, full of subtly subjective narration and ornate descriptions of the fecund swamplands where the dilapidated Skully house sits, and the wasted, tormented people who occupy it. So it was a risky choice of source material for a first feature for documentarian David Rocksavage, and this isn't a particularly distinguished debut.
There are too many curious experiments and evasions. The character of neighbour Idabell, prominent in the novel, is underdeveloped here, making her presence inexplicable. Instead of accentuating how the southern setting would appear to an adolescent and adopting the visual style of, for example, The Night of the Hunter (where everything is primal, enlarged, threatening to the senses), the film-makers give us swamps which are a little too muddy, a mansion just a little too peeling and battered. And while a framing voiceover delivered by a Capote soundalike is forgivable, the fantasy flashbacks where bibulous cousin Randolph remembers lost-love Pepe and imagines Joel with them are simply bizarre in their staginess. They look like out-takes from Fassbinder's Querelle and - the very muted homoeroticism of Capote's book notwithstanding - seem entirely inappropriate. On the other hand there are two very powerful moments involving the servants Zoo and Jesus: an improvised prayer service in which father and daughter sing an exquisite spiritual, and a brief slow-motion sequence in which she's chased on an empty road before (we later discover) being raped.
What remains are the lead performances. David Speck as Joel could have been better coached and his diction is often awkward, but he has a wonderfully still, thoughtful face. Anna Thomson as the dipsomaniac Amy moves through the film like a ghost - pallid, crushed, tears always at the edge of her eyes. Lothaire Bluteau luxuriates in the decadence and the guilty, inward-looking maudlinity of Randolph. Both these adult players are compelling but finally too wan, too overcome by ennui, too eviscerated to lift the film beyond the ordinary.
Credits
- Producers
- Peter Wentworth
- David Rocksavage
- Screenplay
- Sara Flanigan
- David Rocksavage
- Based on the novel by
- Truman Capote
- Director of Photography
- Paul Ryan
- Editor
- Cynthia Scheider
- Production Designer
- Amy McGary
- Music
- Chris Hajian
- ©The Golden Eye 1994 Partnership
- Production Company
- A Golden Eye Films presentation
- Executive Producers
- Robert Stigwood
- Lili Mahtani
- Associate Producer
- Edward Bowen
- Production Co-ordinator
- Richard Futch
- Liaison Officer
- Todd Bruno
- 2nd Unit Co-ordinator
- Donna Walls-Miller
- Location Manager
- Linda Lee
- Assistant Directors
- Edward Bowen
- Elizabeth Green
- Heidi Gottlieb
- Script Supervisor
- Christine Gee
- Casting
- Billy Hopkins
- Suzanne Smith
- Kerry Barden
- Location:
- Tanya Sullivan
- Associate:
- Jennifer McNamara
- Additional Photography
- Les Stringer
- 2nd Unit Photography
- Eric Anderson
- Mark Petersen
- Art Director
- Glenn Rivers
- Set Decorator
- Sally Petersen
- Costumes
- Jane Greenwood
- Associate Costume Designer
- Sarah Edwards
- Wardrobe Supervisor
- Kelly Mitchell
- Key Make-up
- Herta Jones
- Key Hair
- Darlene Brumfield
- Titles
- Ray Seti
- Opticals
- George Apuzzo
- Accordionist
- Charles Giordano
- Music Supervisor
- John Kilgore
- Music Editor
- George Craig
- Recording Engineer
- Gary Chester
- Music Researcher
- Rich Samalin
- Soundtrack
- "Prelude No. 6" Des pas sur la neige" by Claude Debussy, performed by Alexa Babakhanian; instrumental version arranged/conducted by Richard Fletcher; "Valse triste" by Oskar Nedbal,
- arranged by Lars Payne, performed by The London Salon Ensemble; "Moon River - Piano Roll" by Lee David, performed by Kenneth Murray; "Martha" by Friedrich Flotow, tenor: Enrico Caruso; "La Fleur que tu m'avais jetté" from "Carmen" by Georges Bizet, tenor: Enrico Caruso
- Sound Mixer
- Jeffree Bloomer
- Re-recording Mixer
- Michael Jordan
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Budge Tremlett
- Dialogue Editor
- Jupiter Sen
- ADR
- Mixer:
- Mark De Simone
- UK Editors:
- Leslie Hodgson
- Teddy Mason
- Foley
- Artists:
- Diane Greaves
- Jack Stew
- Mixer:
- Ted Swanscott
- Editor:
- Jacques Leroide
- Animal Wrangler
- Dan Hydrick IV
- Snake Wrangler
- Heyward F. Clamp Jr
- Cast
- Lothaire Bluteau
- Randolph Skully
- Anna Thomson
- Amy Skully
- David Speck
- Joel Sansom
- April Turner
- Missouri Fever, 'Zoo'
- Frank Taylor
- Edward 'Ed' R. Sansom
- Leonard Watkins
- Jesus Fever
- Audrey Dollar
- Idabell Thompkins
- Elizabeth Byler
- Florabell Thompkins
- Moses Gibson
- Little Sunshine
- Terri Dollar
- Ellen Kendall
- Jayne Morgan
- cafe woman
- Brian Moeller
- Roger
- Lonnie Hamilton
- old man on bus
- Yami Hidalgo
- Dolores
- Wayne Capabas
- Pepe
- Bob Kingdom
- narrator
- Todd Langenfeld
- Mark Stender
- attackers
- Kyle Steven Walden
- Joel at age 4
- Charles Barber
- young Ed Sansom
- Emilly Petta
- Mrs Sansom
- Guy Mercer II
- good samaritan
- Certificate
- 12
- Distributor
- Downtown Pictures
- 8,834 feet
- 98 minutes 9 seconds
- In Colour