The Phone Call is a 2013 short film (20 minutes) directed by Mat Kirkby.
Heather (Sally Hawkins) starts a shift at her work, namely, a crisis phone center. Not that long after she takes her seat she fields a call from a man named Stanley (Jim Broadbent). For a while it's a struggle to get a weeping Stan to talk, but eventually Heather gets him to tell her that it's the second anniversary of his wife Joan's death from cancer. Stan's comment about how "it's already done" draws Heather's attention, and finally she gets him to reveal what he's already done: he's taken an overdose of pills. Jim doesn't want to be saved, as he tells Heather directly: he wants her to be with him on the phone and talk with him as he goes.
Tropes:
- Bittersweet Ending: Stanley dies, Heather being unable to find out his address in time to get emergency services there. But she has taken his advice to be courageous, and as the film ends she is out on a date with her coworker, Daniel.
- Call-Back: Stanley says he met his wife at "Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club", where he was a musician. The film ends with Heather and Daniel out on a date at that same jazz club.
- Death by Irony: A somewhat invoked example: Stanley overdoses on anti-depressants.
- Disconnected by Death: An atypical example. Heather and Stan's phone call ends not with Stan being murdered, but Stan slipping into unconsciousness as his drug overdose takes hold.
- Distant Finale: Most of the film is a Real Time phone call, but the last scene obviously takes place some time later, and shows Heather and Daniel at the club that Stan mentioned.
- Driven to Suicide: Stanley kills himself, out of loneliness on the second anniversary of the death of his wife.
- Dying Alone: Stanley called the crisis hotline to avoid this. He says that he wanted a voice to talk to him as he slips away.
- Flashback: Or possibly Dying Dream. But near the end of the film there's a brief flashback to when Joan was alive and in good health, coming through the door of their home and calling out to her husband.
- Minimalist Cast: Only four speaking parts, and all but a few lines go to only two of the characters.
- Real Time: There's a brief prologue and a brief epilogue, but most of the film is a Real Time phone call.
- The Voice: Stanley is never shown, even in the scenes that are filmed in his own house. In those the camera is trained at a clock on a mantelpiece.
