Cast Highlights: Anna Kendrick Ryan Reynolds Jacki Weaver Ella Smith

Character: Fiona
Production Status: In theaters
Release Date: February 6, 2015 (USA)
Director: Marjane Satrapi
Writers: Michael R. Perry (screenplay)
Genre: Comedy | Crime | Thriller
MPAA Rating: n/a

Plot Outline:
A disturbed factory worker goes on and off his medications. Told from the man’s point of view, it mixes a dark subject matter with comedic notes.

Jerry Hickfang is a lovable but strange bathtub factory worker who yearns for the attention of a woman in accounting. When their relationship takes a sudden murderous turn, Jerry’s evil talking cat and benevolent talking dog lead him down a fantastical path that ultimately brings him to salvation.

Gemma talked about The Voices for the first time in an interview for The Observer – The New Review (May 12, 2013): “I’m shooting a film called The Voices directed by Marjane Satrapi, who is brilliant. She’s a graphic novelist who did a book and film called Persepolis. I’ve never had such a good feeling with a director — she’s incredible and I’m really happy because I know we’re making good stuff. (…) It’s about a guy who has schizophrenia and we see the world from his point of view. It’s hyper-real, hyper-colourful. His cat and dog talk to him, which he thinks is completely normal, and he works in a toilet factory, which he thinks is the best place in the world. There are various women he works with in the factory and he ends up accidentally killing one of them, which is me, and then he chops my body up and puts it in the fridge. My head is talking to him while it’s in the fridge. But sometimes the camera pans off out of his vision and into the reality of his life, which is horrifying. It’s like Psycho meets Fargo and it’s one of the best scripts I’ve ever read.”

Arterton is indeed a huge fan of Satrapi: “Marjane Satrapi’s a director who lives here in Paris. We made this film The Voices together and it was such an incredible experience for me. She’s just the coolest chick in the world. She made the film Persepolis that was Oscar-nominated and it’s about her life; she’s been through everything and nothing frightens her.” (Stylist – September 25, 2013)

In an interview for Vanity Fair Italy on February 2015, Gemma said that she considered The Voices as being “halfway between Hitchcok and a horror film.”

Gemma’s Role:
Gemma Arterton’s character works in the same factory as Jerry, played by Ryan Reynolds. He ends up accidentally killing her and then he chops her body up and puts it in the fridge.

She confessed: “I love all things bizarre and dark but I never ever get offered things like that.

“So I read it and thought, ‘This is the sort of thing that I love’. I thought it was so funny and very moving.

“And then when Ryan came on board I just thought ‘wow!’ Just watching him on set was like ‘wow!’

“He’s incredible in this movie, it’s one of his best performances. He’s just so easy to work with, it’s a hard part to play and he just did it with such grace, really top class.”

Gemma’s also enjoyed the extra challenge of playing a severed head for most of the film: “For someone like me who uses my body and my hands a lot, not being able to even move my neck was an incredible challenge.”

She’s added that she likes ambiguous female characters: “In movies it’s not easy to find them. And yet most women I know are hard to define.”

From the Photo Gallery:

Cast and Crew Quotes:
• “I absolutely didn’t want to have the severed head on greenscreen, because the actors are working with nothing, they’re not doing things together. It’s boring for me, boring for the cinematographer, boring for everyone. You have to have a very good actress to understand that she’s a severed head. And it happened that Gemma [Arterton] is a great actress. She’s very beautiful and she has a sense of humour, but she’s really professional. At one point she was on the table next to the double of the head and I came in and I didn’t know which one was her.”
– Marjane Satrapi (The Voices director)

• “I wanted to have different kind of women, because in this kind of film you always have this big blonde girl who is about 40 pounds. She’s the victim and you can just take her little finger and break her in two,” explains Satrapi. “I wanted to have different women, and not the same blonde girl who is going to be cut into pieces.”
– Marjane Satrapi (The Voices director)