Hear My Song

(UK)

Limelight. Dir Peter Chelsom; Producer Alison Owen; Screenplay Peter Chelsom, Adrian Dunbar; Camera Sue Gibson; Editor Martin Walsh; Music John Altman Art Dir Caroline Hanania

Ned Beatty
Adrian Dunbar
David McCallum
Tara Fitzgerald
Shirley Anne Field
William Hootkins

First feature from Peter Chelsom goes straight for the heart with Hear My Song, an unabashedly romantic fantasy about a concert promoter (Adrian Dunbar), a seat-of-his-pants operator who's this close to sealing a relationship with his beautiful g.f. (Tara Fitzgerald). The nightclub he's taken over in an Irish neighborhood of Britain is ever on the verge of collapse because of its unreliable bottom-rung bookings.

Desperate for a hit, the promoter books a Josef Locke lookalike (William Hootkins) who's quite mad but seems to fill the billing as 'Mr X - Is He or Isn't He?' Legendary Irish tenor Locke fled from public view at the height of his popularity to avoid tax evasion charges.

Ned Beatty does much to stem the tide of sentiment in a tough, grounded portrayal of the real Locke, a man of substance and self-awareness firmly entrenched in another life. But by the final reels, it's become too much. Dunbar carries off the lead role in winning fashion, but the real discovery is likely to be Fitzgerald, whose gamine charm is perfectly introduced in this old-fashioned romance.

(Color) Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1992. Running time: 113 MIN.

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