The Night Listener - Palm Beach Post movie review

'The Night Listener' will draw you into its mysteries

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

Few of the characters in Armistead Maupin's twisted, creepy The Night Listener can be trusted. And even radio raconteur Gabriel Noone (Robin Williams) — you know, of the nationally broadcast "Noone at Night" show — admits that he is prone to exaggeration.

Gabriel, an openly gay champion of gay causes not unlike Maupin (best-known for his San Francisco chronicles Tales of the City), finds himself at a point where his personal and professional lives are in crisis.

Miramax Films

'The Night Listener'

B+

The verdict: A taut, creepy thriller of identity.

Director: Patrick Stettner
Starring: Robin Williams, Toni Collette, Rory Culkin, Joe Morton, Sandra Oh
Run time: 91 minutes
Release date: August 4, 2006
Rating: R for language and some disquieting sexual content.
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His HIV-positive longtime lover Jess (Bobby Cannavale) has just moved out, largely because he was fed up with having his relationship used as fodder for Gabriel's radio raps. Unnerved by Jess' exit, Gabriel finds himself unable to complete his broadcasts, putting his career in jeopardy.

At his most vulnerable ebb, a publisher friend of Gabriel's gives him a manuscript by an AIDS-afflicted 14-year-old, Pete Logand (Rory Culkin), which details his childhood of abuse from callous, uncaring parents.

Soon afterwards, Gabriel begins receiving phone calls from Pete, who claims to be a fan of Gabriel's, and they strike up a long-distance friendship that seems to meet the emotional needs of each.

Encouraging Gabriel in his attention to Pete is the boy's adoptive mother Donna (Toni Collette), a blind social worker with unusually protective instincts.

The film's plot takes a macabre left turn when Jess happens to hear Gabriel's answering-machine messages and casually remarks that Pete and Donna have very similar voices.

Pete's would-be publisher has never met the boy, and Gabriel cannot find any conclusive evidence that he even exists, so the radio celebrity flies from New York to rural Wisconsin to meet Pete. Not only does Donna make that difficult, claiming that Pete has been admitted to a remote hospital, but everyone in town seems just as suspicious and secretive to the big-city intruder.

Maupin, his partner, Terry Anderson, and director Patrick Stettner collaborated on the screenplay, paring down the novel without shortchanging the psychological intensity. Stettner, whose overlooked 2001 debut film, The Business of Strangers, had a similar whom-do-you-trust aspect, delivers taut suspense, which is the film's trump card.

It turns on the remarkable performance of Collette, who fills in observant behavioral details while still keeping Donna enigmatic.

Between this and her idiosyncratically comic work in Little Miss Sunshine, Collette reminds us what a versatile actress she can be.

Williams seems to have two performance modes — manically comic and somberly dramatic — which he moves between as the project requires, like flipping a light switch. He is fine here, but we never get the sense that he is able to let us get inside his head.

Much of The Night Listener is necessarily opaque, as if it needs to keep us at arm's length. Yet, ultimately, it w, if you let it.