Nora Kirkpatrick’s Long Time Listener, First Time Caller is a jewel of a film that like any precious stone, never fails to impress no matter how much you look at it. Despite its budget, it’s magical realism in the strongest and most spell-binding tradition. The film asks eternal questions of love and mortality, and has enough impressive answers in its 17 minutes, than most modern features covering the same ground.
Our heroine here is ‘Nan’, played to perfection by Breeda Wool. Living in rural California, Nan is a housewife whose isolation isn’t just geographical, but suffocatingly emotional too. Alone all day, her imagination and sensuality explode onto the only dance partner she has – a broom. Her situation doesn’t improve when her husband (an excellent Dominic Bogart) returns home. He’s far more concerned with answering quiz show questions than anything she has to say.
Nan’s only friend and companion was her mother-in-law, who has recently departed. But then Nan discovers a call-in radio show. Its DJ is the charismatic Mister Mars, and his unruffled sidekick, Debbie (played superbly by DeMorge Brown and Jen Tullock). Nan calls in. A conversation is spoken. And a fuse is lit…
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The film is ethereal and enchanting, and there is a lot to love here. The writing and directing by Kirkpatrick is extremely well done, and it’s no surprise that Long Time Listener is already a multiple award winner. With its recent accolades including Best Short Film at the San Diego International, and Sioux City Film Festivals last year.
Any budgetary constraints that Kirkpatrick would have undoubtedly encountered are certainly not evident. Cinematography by Jeff Leeds Cohn, production design by Allesandra Cadman, and original score by Mitchell Yoshida are all finely crafted and first rate. Kirkpatrick has led a very strong team here, right down to the inclusion of singer-songwriter Willy Mason, whose song, ‘Talk Me Down’, wonderfully (and aptly) bookends the film.
But what sets this film truly apart is the acting. Breeda Wool is exceptional in the main role, and without spoiling the story or her subtleties, the breadth she covers is truly inspiring to watch. Wool isn’t just showing you the (self-)repression of Nan. You’re also thrown into the high tide of Nan’s energy and exuberance, which makes it all the more achingly when her husband returns home and everything you’ve seen then steadily disappears back out to sea.
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But Wool isn’t alone in shining off the screen. Dominic Bogart, DeMorge Brown, Jen Tullock all hit their marks and so much more. Each transform what could have been one-dimensional characters into something vividly distinctive and surprisingly nuanced. And even though he’s only in two scenes, Sam Carson is one of the best postmen in film history.
Long Time Listener, First Time Caller is a film that raises as much questions for the viewer, as it does of its own characters. It is an exceptionally beautiful film, visually and emotionally. And it is a film which shows that even in the loneliest of lives and the driest of deserts, where there is love, there will always be magic.
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