Customer Reviews

Other Voices, Other Rooms

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"Other Voices, Other Rooms" was Truman Capote's first novel, published in the late 40s when he was twenty-four. Lyrical and poetic, it was an auspicious debut and hinted at greater works to come. It is the story of a thirteen year old boy who is sent to live with his estranged father in rural Alabama. Upon arriving in the sleepy little town, the locals direct him to a dilapadated mansion on the outskirts of town where he doesn't find his father at first but instead an eccentric pair of cousins who seem to be lost in time.

Part coming-of-age drama with some mystery thrown in, this would be a difficult book for anyone to film. The director does a decent job and the movie is not as bad as I first thought it would be. The film achieves the effect of depicting the hot and lazy atmosphere where time seems to stand still. Production values and cinematography are excellent.

This is basically a character study and therefore strong actors are needed to pull it off. Unfortunatley, this is an area where the film suffers. David Speck as young Joel is physically ideal and has a wonderfully expressive face but he could have been better coached with his lines. Anna Levine as the odd Any Skully is made up to look like a Bette Davis drag queen and she also delivers bad line readings. On the plus side, Lothaire Bluteau as gay cousin Randolf Skully fares much better and commands every scene he is in. April Turner as Zoo, a black servant who longs to move up North and see snow, is very good and her scenes always lend a breath of fresh air when the film starts to falter.

There are no extras on the dvd and the film is presented in full frame format.

For inexplicable reasons, the scenarists of this film decided to remove those very phantasmogorical qualities that permeate Capote's novel, and lift it from a mundane portrait of a depression child sent to live with distant relatives in a crumbling plantation house.

Moreover, there are casting problems. Lothaire Bluteau is excellent as Cousin Randolph as is Anna Levine as Amy. Both seem to have drunk deeply of the absinthe of Southern Gothic, and move with assured melancholy within the dusty shadows of Skully's Landing.

There is just one serious problem with the duo: they are way too young. Thus, what possible meaning can Amy's dialog: ("Cousin Randolph--when are the good times going to come back? Can you make them come back?") mean when they are exchanged between two very good looking people under forty?! The whole premise of some 25 or 30 years having passed since they were abandoned by their former glories is undercut, and we are left to scratch our heads as to what these two relative youngsters are doing sequestered away in this moldering mansion.

April Turner as the negress servant "Zoo" is politically correctified beyond either recognition or any connection with Capote's conception of her, and her characterization consists in little more than being an updated and very sit-comish "Aunt Jemima" type.

The central character of Joel on which the whole story pivots, is so important that one is just dumbfounded at the mis-casting of David Speck in the role. Master Speck is an attractive youngster, and he would have been just the candidate if Disney were doing a remake of "Old Yeller".

But he is badly out of place here, failing to convey Joel's poetical, quasi-mystical psychic drift with his matter of fact, mono-tonal line readings, which convince one that the director Rocksavage gave him no understanding of the character.

These demerits, when compounded by the complete absence of Joel's illness/delirium (which forms such a key piece of the novel's climax)in which the sinister carnival midget, Miss Wisteria seeks Joel out at the mansion, thoroughly cripple the piece. (What marvelous visuals this sequence might have made for--but alas, we'll never know.) More's the pity too, for the physical production in on the mark, with outstanding art direction evidenced in the decadent Sully mansion. Mr. Capote's more tolerant fans may still find enough of interest, here, however, to warrant a viewing.

It was impressed by a perfect acting of Lothaire Bluteau.

The original novel was said that making into a film was difficult.

This time, the subject of the movie is not boy Joel but cousin Randolph.

And, I think that it succeeded because Bluteau acted him mysteriously and beautifully.

I saw Other Voices, Other Rooms at the Hamptons International Film Festival where I think it won an award. Lothaire Bluteau, who won the Canadian Academy Award for Best Actor, gives a complex and inspired performance. The Film is really stollen by April Turner, who plays Zoo, the African American woman who inspires Joel to leave the madness and claustrophibia of Skully's landing.

The New York Times said this was one of the best Southern Films in several decades, and I can't agree more. Don't miss this one!