A Voz Humana

Trying to reconcile the prospect of a love now seem inexistent, a woman and a dog before abandonment watch the passing of time and wait for a resolution that might never come.

Pedro Almodóvar's first film in English is a free adaptation of Jean Cocteau's play La voix humaine from 1930, a monodrama where a woman is waiting for her lover who she was in a relationship with for the last five years. This is not the first time he took inspiration from it, in 1988 he made Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios.

A lively color palette drapes everything in its wake and introduces us to Tilda Swinton. Owing to an overhead shot we discover the apartment is a film set, wood walls, no ceiling, etc. This empty sound stage echoes the protagonist's loneliness and sense of abandon as a menace from outside where the empty spaces claim larger areas than their opposites. Almodóvar traces vulnerability and desperation not with delicacy but with an accentuating force that ricochets the wood-paneled walls of the film set. The drama is such a force that an ax is the object of preference to erase what cannot be forgotten, memories haunting our protagonist like looming remainders of happy times now resignified. Even the dog is restless and appears to find no solace while waiting for his companion.

La voz humana leans on dialogue and visuals to construct a microcosm that touches a special place given the anxieties of people who could relate to it. Metaphorically, it is much more open and contains seeds that could grow in different directions.

Jean Cocteau's play La Voix Humaine (The Human Voice) opened at the Comédie Française in 1930 as a atar vehicle for Belgian actress Berthe Bovy, then popular in Parisian stages. The work involves a woman, only identified as Elle = She, speaking on the telephone with his lover of several years, who is leaving her.for another woman. Her interlocutor is silent for the duration and we don't even know for sure if he is listening or if the connection has been broken.

The play had an enduring popularity, and has been since in the repertory of many theater companies. It was put on screen several times, among them by Roberto Rossellini (first episode of L'Amore 1946: actress Anna Magnani) and by Ted Kotcheff (1966: actress Ingrid Bergman). It even had a second life as an opera by Francis Poulenc in 1958, which has been as well accepted as the play and is still being staged and recorded.

This being the Almodóvar version, we may expect some off the wall happenings. One is a very funny scene where the protagonist browses for axes in a hardware store that seems to have an unusually large inventory of the item. On another, the axe in question is used in a hilarious way. We are shown mid-movie that She's apartment is actually a set in a sound stage which is perhaps a gentle dig at he artificiality of the play. And, last but not least, we have the director's trademark, cinematography in gloriously saturated colors. Tilda Swinton does an outstanding job as She; she tones down the melodrama and borders on the humorous at times. All in all, a refreshing take on the play and the best version I have seen.

The dog is identified in the film credits at the end, but oddly not here - his name is Dash. And he does a great job.

While Swintons performance is a great showcase for her range and understanding of this character - The Human Voice can feel a bit to self indulgent and overly sarcastic. Almodovars direction shines in the moments where Swinton dominates the screen but falters when trying to build a world around her that would support the feeling of the emotional turmoil she is in.

Pedro Almodovar's short is, as the credits state - "freely adapted" from a Jean Cocteau stage production. Almodovar retains the central conceit of the play as it essentially is a monologue with a woman on a telephone talking with a lover (the other voice is never heard). Almodovar includes a brief prologue and he winks at the viewer by 'revealing' the artificiality of his own production. He also revels in his usual saturated color schemes.

Fortunately, the woman is played by Tilda Swinton who has to carry the full half hour alone. Almodovar wisely has shaped the material (for the first time in English) around Swinton's talents and she carries it off for the most part, even if some of the eccentricities the Writer-Director don't really work.