The Voic­es

Jer­ry (Ryan Reynolds) is one trou­bled soul. Not that you’d know it from his cheesy sub­ur­ban good man­ners – a veneer of cheer tak­en to the next lev­el by the hot pink boil­er suit that he wears to work at Mil­ton Fix­ture & Faucet. His kind­ly ther­a­pist (Jac­ki Weaver) is hap­py that he has the social stake of employ­ment, unlike his moth­er who, by let­ting go, became the most cacoph­o­nous of the per­sonas that haunt her son. His doc­tor doesn’t know that Jer­ry has stopped tak­ing his pills and is hav­ing night­ly con­ver­sa­tions with his cat, Mr Whiskers and dog, Bosco.

An arrow spins on a colour wheel of humour rang­ing from the bright-white of hilar­i­ty to a dark shade of black. Reynolds voic­es both his pets. The evil Mr Whiskers has a Scot­tish accent and his crude dis­dain (“Did you fuck the bitch?”) is at once enter­tain­ing­ly ludi­crous and some­how entire­ly log­i­cal com­ing from an aloof feline. Bosco advo­cates for good and Jer­ry relies on him for love in a way that is unhealthy out­side of the human-ani­mal democ­ra­cy of Walt Disney.

Is this mak­ing light of men­tal ill­ness? No. Direc­tor Mar­jane Satrapi and scriptwriter Michael R Per­ry both have wild idio­syn­crat­ic imag­i­na­tions and their com­bined indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and com­ic dar­ing have result­ed in a para­dox­i­cal trea­sure trove. They have made a film that is both bleak and frothy, a tale of despair told with glee, a melo­dra­ma deliv­ered with camp panache, a tragedy that is also a comedy.

Reynolds’ per­for­mance is attuned to all con­tra­dic­tions. Jer­ry falls for the ​“office hot­tie” Fiona, played with a mix of trashy cru­el­ty and wel­come san­i­ty by Gem­ma Arter­ton. Jerry’s tac­tics for get­ting ahead with Fiona are deter­mined by his pets, as they argue with each oth­er for con­trol of his behav­iour. There are exchanges and scenes that if described aloud would sound car­toon­ish. Reynolds ren­ders them touch­ing by his man­ic, pup­py-dog good­will. He does bad things, lots of them, but is always strick­en after­wards. Lit­tle-by-lit­tle, the world of patho­log­i­cal mad­ness is made charm­ing until it’s the most beguil­ing of hallucinations.

Pro­duc­tion design with its vin­tage flair reflects Jerry’s earnest desire to see the good. An unre­li­able nar­ra­tor alone gives no per­spec­tive on the uni­verse and Satrapi pro­vides illu­mi­na­tion in cer­tain shock­ing moments – Jer­ry starts tak­ing his meds, kitsch sur­round­ings become grotesque. Real­i­ty is too ugly to be sur­vived so the roller­coast­er of insan­i­ty is mount­ed again.

Sev­er­al on-the-nose lines nail down the rails on which this incom­pa­ra­ble ride is attached: ​“That head shrinker doesn’t care if you’re hap­py. She just wants you to be obe­di­ent.” It’s true, after a cer­tain behav­iour­al line is crossed, soci­ety doesn’t care for per­son­al hap­pi­ness. By play­ing with sto­ry­telling rules, almost to the point of mad­ness, Satrapi has elicit­ed sym­pa­thy for the devil.