One of last year's dullest cinematic releases was The Grass Harp, an adaptation of Truman Capote's autobiographical novella. Alas, Other Voices, Other Rooms, based on an early book by the same writer, proves equally soporific.
The setting is the American Deep South in the 1930s where, one summer, 13-year-old Joel (Speck) comes to stay at the decaying plantation house of spinster Amy Skully and her eccentric cousin Randolph (Bluteau). Could the man lying paralysed and mute in the attic be Joel's long-lost father? And was Randolph responsible?
With its solemn voiceover, stylised flashbacks and cryptic narrative, Other Voices, Other Rooms strives for significance. However, although British director David Rocksavage elicits an impressive performance from Bluteau as the fading aesthete, the pacing is funereal, the atmosphere claustrophobic and the resolution wholly predictable.
