The attentive reader has doubtlessly realised by now that I have very little interest in film as a storytelling medium. Which is not at all the same thing as being anti-narrative (although I do not accord narrative much pride of place), and it's not to say that I don't think a film's plot is an appropriate object of discussion and criticism. But it is almost certainly the case that the least important part of a film to me is how interesting the story is - I'd rather see "boy meets girl #647" told well than a film so concerned with telling an elaborate story that everything else implodes *cough*cough*cough*

The Night Listener is pretty much nothing but story. This is obvious from the very first scene: Gabriel Noone (Robin Williams), radio essayist, begins an evening's broadcast by admitting to his listeners that most of his stories are stolen right from his daily life, and that the story he's about to tell...and then we watch it.

That story is based on a true incident in the life of author Armistead Maupin, co-adapting his own novel here: a very unwell teen (Rory "The Talented" Culkin) writes a horrifying memoir of his life of sexual abuse at the hands of his parents. Gabriel reads a copy and is deeply moved, contacting the boy Pete and his adopted mother Donna (Toni Collette). For a few weeks, Pete and Gabriel are in constant contact, until Pete's "on a break" lover Jess (Bobby Canavale), and a few others (including Sandra Oh, in a glorified cameo) point out some inconsistencies and confusions, and lead Gabriel to question whether Pete exists or not.

Spoiler, if you're a terrible guesser: ain't no Pete. Instead, Donna seems to have invented him out of a desire to work through her own childhood traumas (abuse that left her blind) and to achieve attention that she doesn't feel she deserves herself.

It's an interesting story. There is absolutely no way to deny that. Would it be so interesting without the "Based on true events" patina? Maybe not, but it was so based, so nothing else matters. It's altogether uncinematic, which is less surprising when one realizes that the three credited writers (Maupin, his ex-lover Terry Anderson and director Patrick Stettner) have very little actual screen experience between them. I don't know what medium it would work better in - probably a novel, like it started - but there's no particular reason this very interesting story begs to made into a movie, unless it is that people see movies and they don't read books.

I'll give it this, it's a tight film, clocking in at 82 minutes and barely feeling half that length. Although in retrospect there were huge patches of overly-expressive dialogue, I didn't notice it while I watched and it didn't weigh the film down. That is one of the big problems with it, actually; this is one of the worst offenders I've seen recently in terms of "telling" us rather than "showing" us. I'm all about explorations of writing, and how an author's personal life can be cannibalised for art; but there are better ways to do that than have characters say "I steal from my life for my writing" or "you stole from our life for your writing" or "this was just something for you to steal for your writing" and so on and so forth.

Cast-wise, Robin Williams is far, far better than I would have imagined him capable of. Is it the best performance ever, or of his career? No, but it's probably the best this role requires, and there's something to say for restraint in these things. He convincingly feels all that the role requires him to feel, and that is that. Toni Collette can't be bad, although this might be the slightest material she's ever been given, and she makes some unwise choices in the final third to play it a little too psycho. Still, "Toni Collette's worst performance" is weak criticism at best, and I'm not certain that I'd even go that far. Very few other actors need to do anything other than intone lines, but they all do so with success, although Rory Culkin is much underutilised.

I don't mean to be harsh on the film, which is certainly better than most of the new films out there (in other words, if you have to see a movie this weekend, go here before Zoom). As I said, the story was interesting and I'm glad I saw the film, although I have a sneaking suspicion I'd rather have read the book.

6/10