In A World... (2013) is its author's film more than some. Written, starring, and directed by Lake Bell, World is a spirited and subtle comedy.
II.
Carol Solomon (Bell) is finding it hard to get by as a vocal coach. She's been pressed to live with her father Sam Sotto (Fred Melamed), a successful Hollywood voice-over actor. But now Sotto <1> wants his daughter out, so his much-younger girlfriend can move in.
Louis (Demetri Martin) is an engineer at an area sound studio. When the man assigned to do the voice-over for a big movie trailer fails to show up, Louis asks Carol to step in. Louis also happens to have a crush on Carol.
Carol's ability shines through her work on the trailer. She starts receiving multiple job offers, but keeps her success mostly to herself. Her father and others in the established voice-over community have a petty and threatened reaction to this new (female) talent on the scene.
III.
World could easily be weighted with gender politics. But Bell favours the light touch, and the polemics implicate from within the artful storytelling. <2> Lake Bell's In A World... is a distinguished first film, indeed.
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<1>Sotto voce ("under voice").
<2>Lake Bell, winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, for In A World... (Sundance Film Festival, 2013).
