MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Hearing Voices’ Probes New Terrain

Sharon Greytak’s beautiful and rigorous “Hearing Voices” (at the AFI USA Independent Showcase at the Monica 4-Plex) takes us into a world we think is going to be familiar--that of the glamorous, brittle existence of a New York model. The film takes place in apartments of sparsely decorated chic in which the people are impeccably dressed, and Greytak punctuates her story with breathtaking silhouettes of Manhattan skylines. But she takes us other places the movies rarely, if ever, have gone.

Her model, Erika (Erika Nagy), is the quintessence of poise and elegance, but she has recently undergone surgery necessitating an ileostomy. She has learned to change her plastic bags (which are undetectable under her clothes) deftly, yet she feels understandably devastated and isolated in a profession in which physical perfection is a given.

To herself she is forever changed; instinctively rather than deliberately, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery in a world that she is beginning to look at differently.

Fleeing from a fight with her lover (Michael Davenport), with whom she sometimes models as a couple, Erika comes upon a young man (Stephen Gatta) as he studies the tides. He is clearly the first individual in a long time who responds to her as a person rather than an object; later on, as they are about to make love, he feels compelled by honesty to tell her that he has a male lover.

There’s a tenacity, an implacability even, in Greytak that keeps us from saying “too much.” She has shrewdly gotten us involved in these two people before the man makes his declaration of homosexuality. We don’t know--they can’t know--where their relationship is going or can go. The point is that for the moment it’s working, and they enrich each others’ lives with their mutual tenderness, concern and understanding.

They are, in short, sensitive , and to her everlasting credit, Greytak does not varnish over the fact that such types can be insufferable in their superiority.

Indeed, when the men in their lives resurface, Greytak gives us a chance to see these men as three-dimensional. While it’s true that Gatta’s physician-lover (Tim Ahern) can view his patients with the detachment of a fashion photographer--a neat equation on Greytak’s part--he is capable of reflection and self-awareness. And Davenport’s model, for all his self-absorption and bulldozing ambition (he thinks Erika ought to cash in on her ileostomy by pitching health-care products), really needs her.

Greytak breaks down the categories that imprison people, suggesting the possibilities of what women and gay men have to offer each other--but also, realistically, acknowledging the limits of those possibilities. She suggests too that that which “scars” Erika, making her different, can become a source of strength and individuality.

Sometimes “Hearing Voices” (Times-rated Mature for adult themes and situations) is a bit arch (and could use some humor) and the cast is a little callow, but it is always intelligent and affecting. It really does go somewhere--and, again, to places few films have.

‘Hearing Voices’

Erika Nagy: Erika

Stephen Gatta: Lee

Tim Ahern: Michael Krieger

Michael Davenport: Carl

A Phoenix International release of a Sharon Greytak production sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts. Writer-producer-director Greytak. Cinematographer Doron Schlair. Music Wes York. Art director Chere Ledwith. Sound Micah Solomon. Running time: 1 hour, 27 minutes.