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The Emotional Bluntness and Naivety of Voicemails for Isabelle

In the 1993 Nora Ephron movie Sleepless in Seattle, there is a rather cheeky scene in which Meg Ryan cries while watching An Affair to Remember -the film which Sleepless in Seattle is a loose remake of. Likewise in Leah McKendrick’s Voicemails for Isabelle there are a handful of conscious references made towards Meg Ryan by a protagonist comparing herself to one of Ryan’s rom-com characters -Tom Hanks is also name-dropped.  
This thematic quote is not accidental. McKendrick’s movie very much endeavours to be a modern take on a Nora Ephron rom-com. In the vein of Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail it incorporates a modern messaging plot device as a means of bringing together its romantic leads, one taking the initiative from a place of anonymity only for the truth to inevitably come out, yet their romantic connection withstanding the situation regardless. One of those classic rom-com premises that only happen in the movies. Of course, for several reasons, McKendrick has a harder time getting away in 2026 with what Ephron could in the 90s. It’s not impossible in an age where a broader culture is more attuned to the creepiness of the behaviour required for such a story, but it is difficult. And McKendrick doesn’t make it easy on herself with the other intensely serious subject she wishes to make her movie about.She pours a lot of melodrama into it.
The film stars Zoey Deutch as Jill, a trainee baker in San Francisco who is very close to her little sister Isabelle (Ciara Bravo), whose years-long battle with cystic fibrosis comes to a tragic end, utterly devastating Jill. She finds some solace however in listening to a trove of backlogged voicemails from Isabelle and leaving her own on her number as a way of keeping her presence alive and coping with her grief. But unbeknownst to Jill, Isabelle’s number has been reassigned to Wes (Nick Robinson) a real estate agent who is charmed by her messages. Eventually armed with this knowledge, he orchestrates a meeting with her that soon turns into a romance, albeit coloured by his struggle to confess the truth of how he entered her life.
What Wes does is incredibly creepy, something his friends and even he himself acknowledges. And it is creepy in a way that exceeds those Ephron movies by virtue of the digital world we live in today. Wes’s access to Jill’s personal life and private information is compounded by the relative ease with which it was accidentally attained, which doesn’t have an element of cuteness that those earlier movies did. What novelty that once existed with new tech has mutated, and you can tell that McKendrick really wishes that weren't the case. And in some areas, she acts like it isn't. It casts the romance immediately in an unseemly light, even as Wes is invested with a conscience about it. Fundamentally, it distracts from the romance and casts it in a shakier light than it might be. Because Robinson is charming enough and Deutch has been in enough rom-coms now it's second-nature to her. Those places and personality details where they do have real chemistry, be it an interest or tenor of silliness that does not come from Wes ingratiating himself to her off of what he knows, indicates a sweet, endearing relationship is possible. But it is clouded by the deception and by the script's struggles to back up the authenticity of the strong feelings from Wes it is trying to relate. His big "I love you" pronouncement is not earned.
It may be a matter of perspective though. Because where the movie takes Jill's vantage point, on her relationship or her tragedy, it does feel more sincere and sentimental. Part of it is the performance. Though Deutch is only a year Robinson's senior she feels considerably older as she radiates a great degree of maturity even through more juvenile beats and details -it's something she pulled off just as well in The Threesome (Robinson meanwhile comes off as too young for his executive role). And the handle around her situation just in general is a little more raw. Apart from her kitchen scenes where the comedy is most played up in an insecure rival played by Lukas Gage and a sexist, conceited head chef played by Nick Offerman, there is an earnest emotionality to Jill’s story and slow recovery in spite of heavy doses of saccharine prodding. It’s there in McKendrick’s intimate focus -the lighting and atmosphere and music -a recurring motif of “Dancing on My Own”, a song the sisters bonded over.  And their sibling energy is decently authentic.
But against this, the movie’s rom-com formulas are trifling and noticeably cheap, such as the impromptu tour guide stunt Wes pulls on a bus when the scheduled guide quits that mostly functions as a way to charm Jill. It’s hard to take that in the context of the movie’s stark scenes of grief and McKendrick seems to be on some level aware of that. She is trying to strike a tone somewhere between those classical studio rom-coms and indie romantic dramedy. And there is more of a disconnect between those spheres than you might expect. It is a haphazard melding where the competing tones have a diminishing effect on one another as the sisterly bond and the romance vie for control of the narrative. One of them certainly feels very thin by the end, abetted by a series of structural clichés.
Even McKendrick appears to grow tired of it, repositioning the framing notably after the standard liar-revealed plot beat in favour of touching on some evolution in Jill's mourning process and her career. It is faint and largely unremarkable but it gels more organically with her story as presented thus far -Wes and his impact a nonentity, who doesn't come up until he makes his reconciliation play. It is the region the film feels most comfortable in, the breaking of it for a conventional rom-com ending that has little substance or ingenuity behind it is quite jarring.
Voicemails for Isabelle is a Netflix romance movie and consequently has an air of mild tepidness to it. But credit to McKendrick, who doesn't resort to a lot of the "second-screen" techniques regarding exposition and plot developments so many other streaming movies do. You can again feel it reaching for the heights of those great rom-coms of decades past. What worked for Ephron though cannot work anymore -as far as the love-through-anonymous-technological-means goes there is no putting the genie back in the bottle. And to try doing so by pairing that kind of a story with something tragic is a fool's errand. This effort, noble though it might be, belongs in the spam folder.

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