Voicemails for Isabelle

“You’re proof that sometimes life rigs things in our favor.”

The first part of Voicemails for Isabelle is so amazing that it would be incredible if the rest could live up to it. It doesn’t, not quite, but it makes a good effort.

As anyone seeing the movie description will know, the movie is about a woman who is leaving voicemails for her recently deceased sister. Unknown to her, that number has been transferred to someone else – a guy who is first entertained by the messages and then becomes so curious he plots to meet her. Note! This review contains light spoilers. You have been warned!!!

For the movie to work, we need to care about the relationship between Jill (the heroine) and her sister, Isabelle. The movie makes us care. We can see how Jill is trying to live for two, as Izzy is stuck at home and in hospitals with cystic fibrosis. We see Izzy supporting Jill in all her adventures, getting Jill to stick up for herself and others. We feel the friendship, the fun, the love between these two sisters. Then Izzy dies, and Jill is totally grief-stricken.

I was grief-stricken too, so much so that during my first watch of this, I had trouble enjoying the rest of the movie, which then shifted to the regular rom com formula. Jill, who has been working as a prep chef in San Francisco, has a boss who is a complete jerk (and who says everything in French before he says it in English). Wes, who is getting her voicemails on his new work phone, is back in Austin, where she’s from (it makes sense that someone in Austin would inherit Isabelle’s cell number).

Why are Jill and Wes both available? What’s wrong with them? In this case, not much. Instead, the movie makes the problem be the rest of the world. We see them both experiencing terrible, and I mean absolutely terrible, dates. I guess they were supposed to be funny but they were so cliché awful that I fast-forwarded during the second watch. Nor did I enjoy the scenes in Bastien’s kitchen, as he, too, is so cliché nasty (and illogical, too).

But the emotional journey gets back on track. Wes is first confused then amused by the voicemails. He starts a text to tell Jill the number now belongs to him but gets interrupted and forgets he did not send it. He tells his best friends about the voicemails – they don’t understand how Jill doesn’t know her sister’s new number – and then another one comes and he realizes that Isabelle is dead.

Wes is not sure what to do. His friends tell him not to tell Jill, because these voicemails for Izzy are helping her heal, but that he should stop listening to them. Yeah, right, that’s not so easy to do. Still intrigued by Jill – he’s seen photos; he knows she’s cute – he finagles two weeks of work in San Francisco and manages to meet her. It’s not hard, he’s got the voicemails, so he knows where she hangs out and what she likes.

We get most of the usual rom com formula. They meet. They date. They have fun together. They form a connection. We see Wes trying, more than once, to tell her about the voicemails but he can’t manage it. She does, of course, eventually find out and they break up. Then, at the end, there is the de rigueur race to meet on New Year’s Eve at their favorite restaurant.

But Voicemails for Isabelle makes some changes to the rom com formula. First of all, there’s less abuse of reality (with the exception of the terrible people they date and Jill’s insane work environment). Perhaps we feel as if Izzy is bringing these two together, but I'm not sure how unrealistic that is (see below).

Second, when they are in their broken-up phase, he is more depressed about it than she is. That’s when she finally gets her career going. In fact, although she’s down, her depression is not about him. She is still grieving for her sister.

Instead of Voicemails for Isabelle having him surprise her arranging a meeting by chance, he actually calls her and leaves her a voicemail.

Instead of a proposal at the end, he wants them to start living together.

I loved how, at the end, Wes leaves a voicemail for Isabelle himself.

Title musings. Voicemails for Isabelle is the title, and it’s not as if there are anagrams or hidden meanings. It does try, more than once, to evoke You've Got Mail with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks.

Bits and pieces

The language is raunchier than I hear in most movies, but it fits one sister talking to her dead sister. Still, don’t hear the word masturbate very often.

Following up on a random point: Idaho does not have a statute that specifically names cannibalism as a crime, but the act is prohibited under existing laws because it almost always involves other criminal conduct such as murder, kidnapping, assault, or abuse of a corpse.

Both Jill and Wes are very attractive. Wes is successful in real estate and should have no trouble meeting women. They do give him a very nerdy side, though.

Given where they seem to be in their careers, Jill should be younger and Wes should be older.

Like the fact that they keep acknowledging it can be very cold in San Francisco.

Jill calls Bastien (Gilbert) Lumière, which is from Beauty and the Beast. I think the actor looks like a cross between Lumière (the candlestick) and Cogsworth (the clock). Of course, Lumière sounds much more French than Cogsworth, which sounds very stuffy British.

So nice not to see ties at Breeda and Andy’s wedding. Ties, like high heels, can be instruments of torture.

I would really like not to believe in messages from the deceased, but I have had too many specific experiences not to be at least an occasional believer. One of them, “It’s Time to Go Upstairs,” was published in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Dreams and Premonitions, the edition from 2015.

Quotes

Isabelle: He asked if I tasted like cancer? That’s it? I’d rather have cancer than cystic fibrosis.

Jill: Isabelle could have been alive a thousand years ago, or a thousand years from now, but what are the chances that in all of time, space, humanity, she was alive with us, right? With me. How lucky are we? And not only did she and I meet. But – but we got to eat pancakes. We got to wiggle out our little baby teeth together. We got to paint each other’s toenails. We got to be sisters.

Tyler on podcast: Ladies, save yourself the heartache. If he’s not texting you, he doesn’t want to talk to you.
Tyler’s a jerk, but that’s good advice.

Wes: No. Okay, so this random girl has been leaving voicemails on my new work cell, and they’re for her sister. And they’re, like, kinda hilarious.
Breeda: Wait. How does she not know that her sister changed her number? Text her.
Wes: I thought I did.

Wes: I’ll tell you what, I’m here for two weeks. Why don’t we try to crack this SF nut together? As fellow Texas expats, I feel obligated to tell you that I am girl sober, so I will not make out with you. Even if you beg me, I won’t do it. Scout’s honor.

Wes: If that alarm had gone off when it was supposed to, these two would never have met, and we would not be here tonight. I don’t know about gambling on forever, but I do know this. You’re proof that sometimes life rigs things in our favor. To Breeda and Andy. You made a believer out of me.

Jill: I knew that this was too good to be true.
Wes: No, Jill.
Jill: It was too perfect, I was too happy. And I’m not – I’m not that lucky.

Jill: I did not leave my home and my beautiful family to waste this one wild and precious life working for the goddamn Temu Gordon Ramsay. You finished fourth on Top Chef!
Bastien/Gilbert/Lumière: It was third!
Jill: And you can drop the bad Lumière impression because we all know that you’re from Wisconsin.

Zelle: If you can’t join em, beat em.

Wes: I know you don’t need a man, Jill. But I sure as hell need you.

Wes: Hey, Isabelle. This is Wes. I wanted to ask for your blessing. I’m gonna ask Jill to move in with me.

Overall rating

Although I was totally grief-stricken by Jill’s loss, in the rewatch I found myself more interested in Wes. He is thoughtful and kind and he has great friends. Also, my experience of the movie really mirrored what Jill went through – too upset to have a relationship, and then slowly healing. But the cliché bad dates bring down the score. Three out of four saved voicemails.

Victoria Grossack loves math, birds, Greek mythology, Jane Austen and great storytelling in many forms.

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