The Human Voice

Please seek out The Human Voice as soon as you can. It is a short, shockingly beautiful exploration of the stages of abandonment.

Swinton manifests, with magnificently nuanced modulation, an emotional tangle; at times, it is raw with a cathartic force, while enmeshed with meekly conciliatory moments of codependence. Wielding a hatchet with violent purpose or begging for a final rendezvous, Swinton’s every scorching word cuts deep.

This is Almodóvar, and so the magnificence is worn lightly, with irony and mischief and a cheeky little moral about how to be a modern woman trapped in the very unmodern role of spurned lover: be hysterical if you want, be philosophical if you can, but never underestimate the liberating power of a little light revenge.

Instead of acting as a short, satisfying jaunt through Almodóvar’s aesthetic, The Human Voice is an exercise in deconstructing the very tenets the filmmaker has propped himself on throughout the entirety of his career.

Swinton’s delivery has a theatrical style – it very much feels as if we could be watching a stage show – and there is something frozenly despairing about it; it is the voice of someone who is unwilling to relinquish her dignity or rationality and just give in to an aria of sadness.

The Human Voice is all about the muddied lines between the fabricated and the genuine, and about how much a performance can be divorced from the sincere feelings that might be undergirding it.

The Human Voice’s images tend to call out in vain; not an utterance is heard. They are symbols suspended in time and space, indicators of something that doesn’t seem to matter very much.

Tilda Swinton and Pedro Almodóvar are a match made in heaven. The production design is exquisite. Would love to see a feature film about this.

A beautifully presented self-reflective monologue about the loneliness and the depression, and how to deal with it. The performance of Tilda Swinton is excellent as always and the directing together with the production design, the costume design and the cinematography reminds me of Lars Von Trier's Dogville in a good way.

This is a short 'film' (half an hour long) which is the director's English language debut. Tilda Swinton gives a good performance as the unnamed main characxter, the lady who we hear discussing things via a phone call in which we can't hear the other person. It's very much an example of showing things from the one persons perspective. It shows Tilda's acting range quite well - it almost surprised me how strongly emotional she becomes, given her composure at the start. Its a curious character based short film - as ever in Almodovar's films, colour plays a particular role in this title. I couldn't not notice the brightish colours present in Tilda's costumes, the home furnishings and so on. This is a slightly quirky and perhaps curious watch, not a bad one, a thoughtful film somewhat that does touch on suicide, so if suicide or self harm triggers you, then your best avoiding this but otherwise I'd recommend it, yes.

One thing I noticed, and adored, about Almodóvar, is that despite his unequivocal propensity for incorporating comedy with melodrama, there's no way his films could come across as either silly or overly sentimental. For his stories are laced with considerable nuance. His Women on the Verge on a Nervous Breakdown, which is also based on Jean Cocteau's play, "La voix humaine" as this short is, maintains an incremental humorous tone so much so it could be adequately described, by its end, as a farce. Yet, as we see Pepa trying to figure out why her lover dumped her without an explanation, Almodóvar delves into Pepa's psyche with great subtlety that's apt for her precarious state. It's a story with no shortage of details. That's why I thought The Human Voice would benefit greatly from the concentrated nature of short films. Our unnamed protagonist's waiting for three days for her lover to come in a last chance to see him has filled her with rage. A vindictive rage almost identical to that of The Bride in Kill Bill, but she still loves him. So she acts out like a maniac: stabbing one of her lover’s suits with an axe in a harmless cathartic release. She wouldn't dare to actually hurt him; she still loves him. Therefore, she's so vulnerable. Over the course of her conversation with his lover, her seemingly stable and wry demeanour gradually crumbles, exposing both her helplessness and her futile undirected rage. Almodóvar brilliantly highlights such contradiction by placing her in her exuberantly furnished, sumptuously colored apartment that's constructed on a soundstage. As she grows more desperate, she begins to lose control. Finally, she decides to free herself from the submissive woman she was, and put an end to their toxic relationship — after all, her love made her too fragile and delicate to venture to turn the tables on him as Alma did on Reynolds in Phantom Thread. The thing is, I didn't feel that she loves him. What's baffling is that I can't put my finger on why exactly I feel so, but it's likely due to the stagy feel this film has. It is a showcase of Tilda Swinton's thespian prowess, but, at times, her monologue comes off rather like a soliloquy — like there's no one on the other side of the phone line. Regardless, The Human Voice is an eye-popping, exquisitely-made feminist work with witty sarcastic undertones.

Is Almodóvar overrated? My opinion is yes. But in the face of certain criticisms that this short-film has received, it surprises me, because beyond aesthetics, this is an Almodóvar who feels measured. And although all his tone is present, the show here is Tilda, and she does not disappoint.