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The measure of every romcom is how it makes you feels when the couple get together at the end. It almost doesn’t matter how cliched everything comes before is, the supporting characters can do whatever they do, the conceit that it all swings around is irrelevant because as long as your heart swells and you get that mushy feeling when they kiss, nothing else matters. If that moment works for you then the film has worked for you. To look at recent movies by this rationale, some of them actually quite mediocre in other respects and some superb, then Anyone But You works, Ticket to Paradise works, The Idea of You works, The Materialists works, Rye Lane totally works whereas Office Romance doesn’t work, The Lost City doesn’t work and if I’m honest Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy doesn’t really work. 

So let’s cut to the chase; Voicemails for Isabelle works. What comes before is a mixed bag but it will leave you with a warm glow so that’s a recommendation. There are some tropes here; we get the guy running through the city on New Years Eve, we see the girl throw in her dead end job to chase her dreams, we have the best friends giving no nonsense advice and there is the big secret that has to be overcome. The movie is referential of other classics of the genre so maybe the inclusion of all of these things is designed to be knowing but it still feels a bit tired. It does have a great lead performance from Zoey Deutch though. Deutch shines in this movie and is the equal of anyone who has taken these steps before her. She has done lots of interesting work recently, including playing Jean Seberg in Nouvelle Vague, but this little Netflix film might be her star making performance. She is better than Nick Robinson but he does well enough as her romantic foil. There is a line at the end when she says ‘I’m Meg Ryan’ and she totally is. (I told you it was a meta.) It cuts off before he can finish saying that he is Tom Hanks and it is right that it does so. Besides, he’d be Billy Crystal. (To his credit he is great in Love, Simon; that movie also works.)

There is another aspect to this that truly sets it apart though and one that doesn’t really lend itself to a romcom. In fact what it essentially says it that the most powerful love isn’t always between a couple at all which seems to fly in the face of the messaging. The whole film is built around Deutch’s loss of her sister who she painfully mourns throughout and this is moving in a deeper way than the final get together of the man and the woman. The voicemails of the title are the messages she leaves for her sibling after she has died and he ends up getting them on his phone which is what drives the plot. Rather than this being a narrative contrivance though it is the true heart of the movie and the real reason to give it your time.