The Sound of My Voice looked to win where its star and director Brit Marling's previous film, Another Earth, didn't, enclosing her narrative ambitions in a smaller world, making things more intimate. But this isn't the case, and The Sound of My Voice instead hopes that ambiguity will create enough white-space mystery, and that a kind-of M Night Shyamalan ending will have you appreciating everything better in retrospect. The film takes aim at the concept of religious faith, attempting to explain it through the microcosm of a small, Marling-led cult. In suggesting that faith is just a series of self-determined steps towards believing – and that faith is for those who fundamentally 'need' it – ...Voice robs itself of its own mystery, turning sharply from science-fiction to didactic allegory. I didn't need this film to have a 'point', I'd much rather it had a better narrative conclusion.
Screening At Cinema Nova From Wednesday 5 December
