Oliver Pearn’s On the Line is a nostalgic and humble story crafted with love and attention, that will keep you on the edge of your seat, chainsmoking cigarettes right along with the operator. Taking inspiration from Telephone Operator, this fits squarely into the procedural true crime genre fascination of the decade. It’s a hybrid of police thriller and single shot location, of the likes of Locke. Victoria Lucie is more than up to the task of holding the drama on her shoulders, playing a young twenty-something phone operator in the 60s England on the small island of Alderney. When she receives a mysterious phone call from a woman in distress, she gathers evidence in real time to catch the criminals, as her guilt over the loss of a best friend spills out of her in fractalized calls across town to anyone who can help.
The fixation with expertise and retro technology is satisfying to watch and contains some of the same sensibilities as the indie darling The Vast of Night from a few years back. On the Line feels more like a radio drama than a movie, watching Lucie’s Agnes in glacially slow zooms as she mutely listens in on tense police chases and explosive exchanges from her seat in the operator’s office. The voice acting is inconsistent, but the way in which the structure of the storytelling spins endlessly through the permutations of random calls allows for juxtaposition of discordant moods in ways that are thoughtful and exciting.
It’s easy to imagine the ways in which On the Line could become a series or anthology, the format is so flexible to that sort of expansion of stories. If no one has floated a sequel where a newly married Agnes is solving crimes some dark and stormy night, they absolutely should.
