The Reel Critic: In a World...

The phrase “in a world” evokes that overly dramatized Hollywood movie trailer voice. But what does that voice sound like? The voice you now hear in your head is almost certainly a deep, booming, male voice. Lake Bell’s 2013 debut feature, In a World…, in which she also stars, deals directly with gender dynamics as applied to the cutthroat, male-dominated world of movie voiceover. This snappy, tragicomic gem is the story of Carol, a vocal coach who must overcome the wishes of her voice-actor extraordinaire father (Fred Melamed) in pursuing her own dream of becoming a voiceover artist. Bell, who wrote, starred and directed, implicates each of us in the patriarchal world painted in the film. In many ways this world could substitute for real-life Hollywood by forcing us to question our association of voiceover narration with an idealized man’s voice.

For better or worse, Bell creates a just-absurd-enough filmic reality to dispel some of the would-be viewer discomfort. Ultimately the film pokes fun with a more thorough undressing of the structural social ills of the film world. Complete with a coming-of-age awkward romance - Demetri Martin is convincing as the bashful love interest of Bell - a troupe of standout supporting comedic relief, especially Nick Offerman and Tig Notaro, and a subplot involving a marital crisis, which at times seems to overwhelm the main plot, In a World… is disarming in its low-key visual style and on-point writing. Three particularly memorable moments include a bizarre, self-deprecating Eva Longoria cameo as herself, references to a disturbingly plausible exoticized Hunger-Games-esque franchise called The Amazon Games and an appearance from Geena Davis, star of Thelma and Louise, to provide a sobering dash of reality for the main character (and us) at just the right time.

In a World… is more impressive when considering how few films star and are written and directed by women, never mind the fact that Bell fills all three of those roles exceptionally well here. Bell has somehow orchestrated a film that both appeals to a mainstream audience and also effectively challenges the very imbalanced structure within which she operates. Any way you break it down, Hollywood amounts to a disturbingly patriarchal social club.

Look at earnings differentials between male and female actors. Consider that so many Hollywood films flunk the “The Bechdel Test,” which asks if a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other that a man. Survey the demographics of Academy Award voters. A 2012 Los Angeles Times study determined Oscars voters are 77 percent male. Or do none of the above and just watch Hollywood movies and notice who’s doing the storytelling and whose story is being told. The results to any of the above evaluations are chilling, made more terrifying only by the extent to which general apathy characterizes most people’s attitudes towards the extreme gender inequality that permeates the dominant institution of the most popular form of storytelling in the United States.

I mention all of this to highlight that the many obstacles Bell must have faced in making this film are not insignificant and in many ways actually mirror the obstacles faced by her character Carol in pursuing her career as a voiceover artist. Of course, the Hollywood landscape I’ve described fails to account for the myriad of gender identities overlooked in a conversation about the male-female gender binary and also ignores important intersecting identity categories like race and class. The LA Times study mentioned above found that the Academy voters are also 94 percent white. However, this particular film focuses primarily on a woman trying to make it in a “man’s world.” Women quite literally struggle to be heard here.

So what to make of In a World…? It’s a tiny film by Hollywood standards with a budget south of $1 million that, by Hollywood standards, is thematically radical, though we know at this point that Hollywood standards are … flawed, to say the least. At the end of the day, though, the film is immensely watchable and populated by complex characters figuring out how to live in a flawed world. Sounds kind of familiar.