Known Voices

Directed by James Piercy

2021

A woman struggling to cope with her mother’s mysterious death is the central theme of a new short from Midlands filmmaker James Piercy.

We open Known Voices with what appears to be the aftermath of a party or a wake. A woman in black (Bryony Tebbutt) clears up and experiences a sad moment in her empty childhood house.

Mourning the loss of her mother, she struggles to come to terms with the circumstances as we discover her mother died after hitting her head. After a handyman arrives to collect his tools, we flashback to other aspects of this woman’s life, including happier times with a now absent partner.

The woman’s anguish sees her turning to alcohol to numb the pain and it’s suggested this could be the cause of her failing past relationship.

Some floating camera and well-chosen music sees the director highlight the seemingly soothing effects of alcohol and her rose (rosé?) tinted view of a loving relationship now lost to the past.

The director uses great cinematography and a sterling central performance from Tebbutt to show the highs and lows of loss and addiction. Agony is eased by alcohol yet causes the loss of love in a never-ending cycle of desensitised pain and hurt.

When a night time scare sees her calling for help, the voice on the other end of the phone believes this is more drink-infused instability. And her solution is to drink more wine in a fit of anger.

Known Voices takes the idea of an unreliable drunken narrator (akin to The Girl of the Train) which helps breath fresh life into some of the familiar story beats. However, as we flashback to indistinct images a woman on the floor, the mystery of how all these circumstances came to be intensifies.

Soon we are shown drunken fumblings with the handyman’s friend and with an increasing number of time-jumping cuts an audience will feel discombobulated with the non-linear narrative. Can we put the blurry puzzle pieces together before the short’s end?

But this serves to increase the anxiety both of the protagonist and the viewer. As the story culminates, we find that maybe her drunken episodes weren’t just delusions and perhaps her paranoia was more than a little justified.

Yet the short ends on an ambiguous note with a number of tension-filled beats playing out but also perhaps something more supernatural is lurking in the home. As already explored, the film maintains its uncertainty right until the end with some audience interpretation required to deconstruct its open-endedness.

But that’s no bad thing and James Piercy has taken a strong short story and delivered a triumphant little drama-thriller. And Known Voices has satisfying elements that will keep you both on your toes and guessing right up until its climatic conclusion.

★★★★☆

Michael Sales