Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Ana Rocha De Sousa
Starring: Lucia Moniz, Sophia Myles, Maisie Sly, Ruben Garcia, James Felner
Listen, actor Ana Rocha’s devastating directorial debut (Rocha also
co-wrote the film, along with Paula Alvarez Vaccaro and
Aaron Brookner) opens with keenly framed shots of a family getting
their young charges ready for school: washing billowing on lines,
breakfast cereals, a hotly contested bathroom system. Both adults and
children speak in English and Portuguese, with parents Bela (Lúcia Moniz) and Jota (Ruben Garcia) keen to retain their identity, yet also
to integrate their children into British society (Diego,
James Felner, Lu, Maisie Sly, and baby makes three). It’s
the sort of domestic set up that we may scoff at for its quotidian
simplicity, yet gently envy for its loving peace, which is clearly
communicated by the concise performances. Rocha’s burgeoning theme of
communication is consolidated by Lu’s deafness, and the misfortune of her
hearing aid battery failing before school (my father has one, and I can
vouch for this happening more often than you may imagine). Harried, the
parents pack Lu off to school anyway...
And then further cracks begin to show. Taking the kids out for a walk,
Bela secretes the youngest down an alley before taking the empty pram into
a corner shop for some home essentials shoplifting: working without a
contract, husband Jota is waiting on a pay cheque. As she pilfers bread,
the kids are discovered by an aghast stranger before a flustered Bela
finally returns. In school, Lu’s inability to hear causes an incident
which leads to the school nurse noticing a series of bruises on the kid’s
back... It is implied that social services have been involved with the
family before, which, of course, means that the school is duty bound to
contact them again. A Care Order is instigated and, in a harrowing
sequence, the next day the children are taken into care.
While certain aspects of Listen’s opening are a bit on the nose, the performances across the board,
encouraged by actor-by-trade Rocha’s intuitive direction, are deeply
affecting, balancing desperate emotion with poignant credibility. This is
the heart-breaking centre of Listen - witnessing Bela
(alternately distraught and stoic) and Jota (furious, then calm)
attempting to cope with the devastation of losing their family and a
system stacked against them. The depiction of the soash here is
unforgiving: the children are kept in a bleak building, comprised of
utilitarian classrooms with shattered windows, while the attitude of its
officials is obstinate and unhelpful. The family are not allowed to speak
to each other in Portuguese, and a meeting is halted when Bela attempts
sign language. When the offer of support from an underground system
occurs, it becomes an essential last resort...
The moral situations depicted in Listen are tricky. Firstly,
the film seems weighted against social services in a manner that I did not
particularly feel comfortable with. The aid provided by the social
services
may not be perfect, but, to my mind, at least there is a system in place which is designed
to support and help vulnerable children. And while your heart may break
for the characters on screen, at the same time if there wasn’t an
intervention involved in a family where the mother leaves a kid in an
alley to steal food she can’t afford, while another child has a
mysteriously bruised back, you would wonder where your tax pound was
going.
The film argues that this is a family which requires assistance, however,
and not the full extent of social sanctions. Yet in
Listen the authorities are at times venal, and withhold
information, almost as if they want the children to be separated across
the country with unfamiliar families: a narrative dynamic which seems
contrived to provide conflict, at times unconvincingly.
Perhaps there is a truth somewhere between Listen’s authoritative representations and the everyday reality of social work,
and while I am certain that Bela’s story is one that has tough precedents
in real life, one would hope that there are more hopeful outcomes, too
(brief disclosure: in another of my lives, the events depicted in
Listen are very close to home, indeed. Working with children
who are in care, and some who perhaps should be in care, and who make
disclosures which always need to be acted upon is complicated, and
difficult and the outcomes are rarely ideal. The sickening choices figures
of authority are committed to make are never ever easy. A final by-the-by
observation: no one is judged more harshly in such situations than a
mother).
Its didacticism aside, Listen is a highly accomplished
dramatic achievement. And even if its ideological bias may be
questionable, the film does invite negotiation and questions, and offers a
valuable portrayal of lives which most of us will thankfully never have
personal experience of.
Last year in the UK
there were 388,490 children placed on care plans.
Listen is on Prime Video UK now.