The Listener
Beth is a helpline volunteer – part of the small army that gets on the phone every night across America, fielding calls from all kinds of people feeling lonely, broken, hopeless. Over the last year the tide has become a tsunami. As Beth goes through her shift, the stakes rise: is this the night she will lose someone? Save someone? Eventually, Beth’s own story comes to light, revealing why she does it. All along we remain with her: listening, comforting, connecting – patching the world back together, one stitch at a time.
- Released: 2022-09-09
- Runtime: 96 minutes
- Genre: Drama
- Stars: Tessa Thompson, Logan Marshall-Green, Derek Cecil, Margaret Cho, Blu del Barrio, Ricky Velez, Alia Shawkat, Jamie Hector, Casey Wilson, Bobby Soto, Rebecca Hall, Matt Van Orden
- Director: Steve Buscemi
Comments
- danieljfarthing - 21 May 2024
Self-indulgent, pretentious, art-house bore
One-actor movies "Buried" & "Locke" were surprisingly good, but "The Listener" is more the art-house bore many would expect such films to be. Samaritans-style helpline worker Tessa Thompson does a night-shift at home taking random, unrelated calls (from various voices inc Rebecca Hall) whose tones range from disturbing to sad to quirky. It'll shine on Thompson's CV (especially as she is great) and Steve Buscemi directs his first film since 2007 with intimate warmth, but Alessandro Camon's plotless character-study screenplay is too self-indulgently pretentious to make it entertaining. Props indeed to helpline workers... but this one's still a dull movie. Flush it.
