Daniele Guerra | Hear My Voice / 2021

everything can change so quickly

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alex Kassab (screenplay), Daniele Guerra (director) Hear My Voice / 2021 [12 minutes]

 

Four years after moving to London for his career, would-be opera singer Mike (Ollie Marsden) has yet to pass an audition, and he’s recently been dreaming that when he actually goes to perform that he has entirely lost his voice.

     He keeps a journal, which has become his mainstay since he has had sex with only one guy, he claims, and now can’t even recall his name; and apparently on that occasion he has been visited by an apparition of his eccentric grandmother (Eileen Nicholas) with whom he traveled the world has a child, and who infused in him an interest in the arts. But she is not at all approving of his current situation.

     He carefully studies the scores of works which he readies to perform, ignoring even the glances of handsome young men, and being particularly rude to those who might attempt to engage him in more worldly things.

     His only real contact with others, often far from pleasant, are the customers who visit Donlon’s bookstore, where one customer claims that the small store smells of wood.

     An occasion in a coffee-shop stands in for what is apparently the dozens of times he has refused to allow the world entry. Insisting to himself that he must focus on opera and live a monastic life, he misses the glance of a handsome tattooed man (Simon Robins), and rudely dismisses the coffee-shop barista who seems fascinated by serving an opera singer. When the eager young man, Andy (Kyley Winfield) says that he’s never even been to an opera, Mike’s response is simply “You should go some time,” as he puts on his headset to drown the world out.

     That night he again experiences his repeated dream, opening his mouth to sing with nothing coming out, along with another visit from his dead grandmother who expresses worry for her grown grandson, he interrupting it, perhaps, as her disdain for him not more fully preparing for his opera auditions.

      At work the next day, he again encounters the coffee-shop barista who has tracked Mike down to return his journal which he left in the café. But when he queries Andy how he knew where to find him, he also realizes that the young man has also read his journal, and instead of even thanking him for its return, he angrily dismisses him.

      When the young man not only apologizes but chastises Mike for his “stuck up air,” the would-be opera singer suggesting that he might seek something else to do, hinting that Andy has no other interests in life, which further outrages the kind barista.

  As he starts to leave, Andy turns back, responding: “I prefer the you in the journal. No wonder you’re lonely.”

      Even in his isolation, however, Mike continues to check in with his dating app, obviously window-shopping for something which he denies himself. But he has been asked to audition again for what he describes as “the big one.”

      Yet our hero, fearing what might happen, instead answers back to make an appointment with a tattooed tough who goes under the name of “Hackney boy.” His grandmother, again visiting him in his imagination, wonders “what happened to the bold child I used to travel with? This isn’t you.”

      “Well, maybe you don’t know me then,” he argues against the ghost.

      “Stop. Everything can change so quickly,” she advises him.

      Mike returns to the café, apologizing to Andy, who at first treats him coldly, but when Mike explains that he found it embarrassing, that he now knows too much about him, the barista admits that he tried to ignore it but got “sucked in.” And in a surprising move, Mike wonders if he might…his several pauses leading Andy to fill in the invite for a drink.

       Meeting up with Andy, Mike suggests, after having now been rejected from a young opera performers’ program, that he is thinking about giving opera up. “I think I may just not be that talented.”

       Andy assures him that he know he’s talented, “I read your writing. …I couldn’t stop reading. Funny, but beautiful in places.”

       But it’s not a career, is it? “Writing in a journal.”

       Andy, who reveals that he is also a journalist, claims “writing is writing.”

     Clearly they get on, and as in all romantic narratives, their discussions lead to a fascination with each, and that, of course, to something close to love, as finally the apparition of his grandmother looks fondly on.

       This well-done short film is what one might describe as almost a feel-good movie for those of us of the working class, the obviously well-groomed, educated and wealthy Mike (his grandmother has left him money) having fallen for the multi-cultural, working-class, everyday Andy. It’s a bit hard to believe given the still somewhat rigid class-structures of British society wherein which this film emanated.

       The director, Daniele Guerra was born in Rome but now lives in London, and has directed at least three films and several operas in the United Kingdom and throughout Europe.

 

Los Angeles, June 30, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2025).