Truth elusive in ‘Listener’. Robin Williams shines as a writer and radio star in a story that blurs distinctions between illusion and reality.
In “The Night Listener,” director Patrick Stettner and novelist Armistead Maupin (“Short Cuts”) remind us that all storytelling is a con game. It’s a useful point to keep in mind while navigating this tricky, chilling tale of anguish and illusion, itself a fascinating exemplar that you can’t always believe what you see and hear.
The premise is pure American gothic, derived from Maupin’s real life experiences and subsequent semi-fictional novel. Robin Williams (“Good Will Hunting”) plays Gabriel Noone, a stalled big city writer and radio personality who - like Philip Seymour Hoffman’s similarly brilliant, similarly gay scribe in “Capote” - leaves the familiar confines of New York City to pursue a story in the hinterlands.
Noone alights on rural Wisconsin looking for Pete (“Signs” scene-stealer Rory Culkin), an AIDS-stricken teenage boy who wrote a memoir detailing his horrendously abusive childhood. Touched by the book, Noone had struck up a phone friendship with Pete and his caregiver, Donna (Toni Collette), though he never met either one of them personally.
Tracking down Donna - who is blind - at a local diner, Noone realizes that his worst suspicions may be true: There is no Pete. In fact, the boy could be an elaborate fiction staged by Donna, who plays the role of long-suffering surrogate mother so convincingly, even the locals are duped. All that marks Pete’s existence is a single, inconclusive photo and a phone voice that his adult companion may have faked herself.
Collette is a force of nature as Donna, whose explosive nut case mood swings are routinely triggered by matters as minor as Noone’s reluctance to touch her pretty new sweater. And, yet, does Noone sniff a hint of his own madness in this strange, approval-starved woman? Before he leaves New York, his ailing lover (Bobby Cannavale from “The Station Agent”) accuses him of “sifting through this relationship, looking for material” and changing details of their courtship to suit his nonfiction stories. Williams gives a terrifically vulnerable, reflective performance as Noone, a man who - like many of the actor’s roles (“One Hour Photo,” “What Dreams May Come”) - is poised in a sort of living purgatory.
With few missteps, director Stettner makes lively suspense of Donna’s dementia, suggesting - if one were to read into things a bit - that she fabricated the boy and his book specifically to tweak Noone’s self-publicized demons. Now, that’s how you con a con man.
‘The Night Listener’
Stars: Toni Collette, Robin Williams, Rory Culkin, Bobby Cannavale
Behind the scenes: Directed by Patrick Stettner, from a script by Armistead Maupin, Terry Anderson and Stettner
Rating: R for language and some disquieting sexual content
Running time: 1 hour, 31 minutes
Grade: B
