‘The Listener’ Review: Tessa Thompson Presents Steve Buscemi’s Persian Crisis Hotline Study

A break from some of the physically demanding and sometimes villainous roles he’s played in recent Marvel and HBO franchises. western worldTessa Thompson plays Listener As an unprecedented superhuman: a crisis hotline worker.

Perhaps seeing an opportunity to live up to that old theatrical adage sometimes attributed to acting coach Stella Adler that “acting is responsive,” this low-key, low-tech piece focuses heavily on Thompson’s expressive face as he listens to pleas for help. . Of 10 very different people in danger. The voice cast offers a mix of familiar names (Margaret Cho, Alia Shawkat, Rebecca Hall) and lesser-known names that are democratically given roughly the same amount of time for the film.

Listener It marks the fifth directing credit for actor and director Steve Buscemi, his second. lonely jim Where is strictly off camera? (His last feature was an equally vigorous double face, Interview (from 2007, in which he also starred opposite Sienna Miller). The entire collaboration feels decidedly staged, but it’s still empathetic and often heartbreaking work on the sheer number of subscribers, like Thompson’s character, who are often unpaid volunteers. Oppose every day. Although many people in the U.S. do not have access to medical or therapeutic care thanks to the chaos and bureaucracy of the U.S. healthcare system, the death rate from suicide and drug and alcohol abuse continues to rise among many demographic groups, especially among color.

The recent COVID pandemic, briefly alluded to in Alessandro Camoni’s script, may be partly to blame for these deaths, as many people were left in isolation during the lockdown. But as the callers here show, there’s more than enough regular non-Covid-induced mental illness, abusive relationships, and loneliness to keep hotline workers like “Betty” Thompson busy (like many callers, that’s not her real name). . your night shift.

Some people just want to talk to someone sympathetic because they’re getting into trouble, like ex-con Michael (Logan Marshall Green), who remembers that the last time he wore a bandana over his face in the store, he was arrested for carrying a gun. He turns out to be one of the sweetest, most stable men Beth associates with, as some of the others seem deeply concerned, such as Alice (Ricky Velez), who hates women, and Ray (Jam). . Hector), a veteran suffering from PTSD who tells traumatic war stories that lead him to drink.

Women who call have no less problems, although psychologically it makes sense that some are dealing less with their own disabilities or personal demons than with the stress of caring for others, like Corinne (Cho), a mother of a daughter with special needs who feels . Constantly “a day late and a dollar short”. A conversation with Jinx (Blu Del Barrio), a runaway teenager who is being pressured by her boyfriend to start doing stunts to pay for her drug addiction, is more instructive than the police reports.

The one Bette seems to relate to best is Sharon (Shockat), an eloquent woman with serious psychiatric problems, whom Bette tries to guide through writing to find a way out of her grief. Finally, Sharon enters the conversation with a poem, offering a somewhat artificial but comforting ray of hope.

Beth’s most interesting and longest conversation is with English-accented Laura (Hall), a seemingly polite woman who practically challenges Beth to come up with a convincing argument as to why she shouldn’t kill herself. Their dialogue opens up their terms of reference to include Betty’s ethical philosophy, religion, personal history, and the reasons she became a helpline employee, breaking protocol to share with Laura. Hall’s prowess as a vocal artist gives imaginative body to the disembodied voice we hear, and to Thompson, who stars in Hall’s directorial debut. will happenCorresponds to your note the note.

While the material could easily work for a podcast or a different audience, Buscemi, cinematographer Anka Malatynska, editor Keith Williams and the design team work effectively to keep visual interest away from Betty’s face, even the bells on your shelves. Her adorable furry dog ​​and plush furniture in her modest Los Angeles bungalow. We, as patients who visit the therapist in her home, must infer what kind of person Betty is from the things around her and the way she talks and reacts, but at the end of the day it’s all a kind of projection. The important thing is to talk about business, a human need that is often not satisfied.