Voicemails for Isabelle Review: This Is How A Heart Breaks and Heals

Sometimes love means saying goodbye. You feel the weight of lost love in Voicemails for Isabelle. The movie takes us through Jilly and Isabelle’s tragic journey from the start. We know the hero dies in this one, but we still find ourselves grieving along with Jill.

Screenwriter and director Leah McKendrick captures the agony of losing one’s soulmate, especially at a time of discovery and growth. Jill must navigate this loss and grow without her.

The best thing McKendrick does with this movie is make the audience feel. You feel the loss of Isabelle, Jill’s grief, and this unique (but not uncommon) sisterly bond. It’s the type of closeness that only those with sisters or close siblings can understand.

They become our world if we’re lucky. To lose them is to lose one of the most important parts of ourselves. The film’s most important storyline is one of grief and moving forward, but the love story steals your heart.

Nick Robinson and Zoey Deutch will embarrassingly have you smiling as you watch them travel around San Francisco and fall in love. It’s the meet-cute of rom-com dreams. Nevertheless, you feel the same conflict as Wes.

He’s invading something intimate by listening to these voicemails. However, the film never tries to justify his actions. It even plays it smart by making sure that Wes realizes that he cannot have sex with Jill with such a big secret looming over them.

It demonstrates how modern rom-coms are becoming more careful and considerate, because can you really consent to being with someone when they keep a major secret from you? Voicemail for Isabelle never justifies Wes’s actions, but never paints him as an awful guy.

Like many leads of rom-coms, he has a bit of detachment issues, but changes once he hears Jill’s first voicemail. However, he’s not exactly a womanizer. You get the impression that he just hasn’t found the right woman.

Jill is his soulmate, even if Isabella is hers. Isabella has rigged the system to ensure these two people find each other. It’s a beautiful idea that you lose one soulmate but gain another through the original soulmate’s assistance.

Voicemails for Isabelle is beautifully sentimental. It’s a sappy romance, but that’s what viewers expect and adore. You will shed some tears, enjoy the too-on-the-nose, cost-a-fortune songs, and fall in love.

This movie is what romantic comedies should be. They should make you feel all the butterflies of love, while feeling all the agony of loss. It also ties in nicely with some other empowering messages.

Wes is hopelessly in love with Jill. She loves him too, but doesn’t need him. The film shows a man who is vulnerable and obsessed with her. She’s his everything.

Jill isn’t a pathetic character, desperate for a man, but a woman who has dreams and goals beyond him. This is what young women and girls need to see in their romantic comedies. He is not the goal but the addition to her life.

This may be one of Netflix’s best romantic comedies in a while. Zoey Deutch is really their rom-com gold, but Nick Robinson is just as charming.

He makes us swoon with every longing glance we witness. This is what movie love should look like.

Stray Thoughts

• I loved hearing Robyn. Immediately knew this was my kind of movie.
• The chef stuff was fun, but Nick Offerman as the head chef really sold it.
• This was a bit raunchier than expected. Not PG-13, but I enjoyed the little profanity and awkward sex scenes.
• The music was very good, but I know Netflix is just throwing money around at this point. 
• This movie felt like a woman wrote it. I loved that.

 

What did you think of Voicemails for Isabelle? Share your thoughts in the comments below, and don’t forget to leave your own rating!

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Stream Voicemails for Isabelle on Netflix.

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