Listen to the Voices

Even if its first few scenes, which appear to be real archival footage, hint at the coming darkness, Listen to the Voices (Original title: Koute Vwa) initially seems like a children‘s movie.

The camera follows kids as they talk and converse among themselves. It then follows one of those kids into a home where he has some lighthearted banter with his grandmum. Their subject is one of the usuals: the existence or absence of a girlfriend.

From that exchange, we get a particularly modern bit of insight into relationships: if a girl likes you because she saw your pretty face on social media, she is likely to leave you for another pretty face on social media. The philosophy comes from the kid but it sounds like the type of wisdom that an older person would reject to his/her detriment. Nonetheless, all of that talk is appetizer for a story that is decidedly not about romance.

In time, Melrick, the kid, gets involved in much heavier conversations, even when he barely contributes. When we meet him, he is with his grandmum for the holidays in a ‘hood in Guiana, where he has taken up drumming. He seems mighty pleased about the arrangement and would rather stay with grandma than head back home. What he is yet to fully grasp is that his family and his grandma’s neighbourhood are still dealing with the fallout of an incident from years before.

We understand, over the course of the film, that the spirit of a man named Lucas hovers. We soon learn why. He is Melrick’s late uncle, and it is in discussing his life and his murder at a party that the film’s lightness curdles into darkness. Yannick, Lucas’s best friend, speaks to Melrick about how the death still haunts him. Melrick’s grandmum, in a flipping of their earlier comedic conversation, tells her grandson how close she was to hitting one of the culprits with her car. With each conversation, you see Melrick’s expressive face coming to terms with what he is being told. Grandma preaches forgiveness; Yannick isn’t quite ready for that. But what does all of this mean to Melrick, a kid whose memory doesn’t encompass this event that nonetheless affects him so?

For much of the film, the exchanges and even the cinematographic choices have the feel of a documentary. We get a shaky-handheld lofi vibe. A lot of the discussions proceed in the same manner. People speak as though the obvious presence of a camera changes little of their behaviour. This, one imagines, is what producers of realist cinema crave. But there is an extra reason for the lack of artifice.

The film’s main cast are playing lightly fictionalised versions of themselves and the story being told has its roots in director Maxime Jean-Baptiste’s family history. At the end of the film, there is a dedication to the real Lucas and the cast is using their real name. Melrick, Jean-Bapiste’s actual cousin, appears to be a stand-in for a director ruminating over a central event in the life of his family. Maybe this is therapy but it does play well on the screen.

It comes as no surprise t0 learn that Listen to the Voices got distribution even before its Locarno premiere. Jean-Baptiste has made a deeply impressive first feature, handling a personal subject with confidence. Of course, his film has one of the hallmarks of a first feature without the involvement of big investment: it looks cheap. But it works in Jean-Baptiste’s favour, given the personal nature of the project. And although set in Guiana, the narrative of violence, vengeance, and blackness in poor neighbourhoods connects this film to John Singleton’s Boyz in the Hood and Fernando Meirelles’s City of God.

Somewhere, a smart curator is dreaming of screening these three films together. A possible theme is the long-lasting impact of slavery. Another, perhaps less politically correct, theme is the vicious circle of violence and vengeance in poor black neighbourhoods—wherever they are found.