The human voice of Pedro Almodóvar

Tilda Swinton buys an ax near the beginning of Human voice, a new short film by Pedro Almodóvar that packs the punch of a dozen feature films. This trip to the hardware store represents the only time her character has left her apartment for three days, although she lies about it on the phone with the lover who recently left her, telling her that she went to the theater and eats voraciously. in restaurants with friends. The truth is, she was waiting alone for him to come and pick up the things she packed in suitcases near the door, giving him a chance to see him one last time. Her anonymous character is an actor, and the purgatory she’s been stranded in left her with an even more dramatic feeling than usual – hence the ax, which she turns out to have obtained for a gesture. One of her lover’s costumes has been laid on the bed they used to share, like the shed skin of an animal that has grown up and moved, and she takes her new tool bought in. a fit of rage. It’s a great action that no one else is there to witness next to their dog, who has also been abandoned – and, of course, those of us watching, who are his real audience.

Human voice It all revolves around the confusing lines between the made and the real, and how much a performance can be separated from the heartfelt feelings that might underlie it. The film, which lasts 30 minutes and marks Almodóvar’s English debut, is the third by the Spanish director to take inspiration from Jean Cocteau’s 1930 monodrama. Human voice, and most direct, although as the credits note, it is still “loosely based” on the play. Almodóvar highlights the contrived nature of the production from the start, with Swinton in a Balenciaga ball gown morosely wandering around a soundstage that is soon revealed to contain the apartment in which her unnamed character lives. It’s a beautifully appointed place, all the rich colors and inviting textures and enviable furnishings, the kind of creation that seems to come straight out of an Almodóvar movie, with periodic shots from above or from the plywood exterior to remind us that is precisely what it is. .

This theatricality, with the nature of the setting made clear and the audience recognized by a fourth glance breaking through the wall in the opening sequences, matches the demeanor of Swinton’s character, and Swinton, as angular and ironic and fearless as ever, leans forward. on it. She engages in some sort of suicide attempt halfway through, dressing in a plush red knit ensemble and a face full of makeup before taking a careful handful of pills and curling up next to the costume she is wearing. she had previously attacked. When she is awakened by a call from the man leaving her and whose voice we never hear, she informs him that she knew the combination of drugs would not kill her, and that it was another of these gestures for herself and for the viewer. After all, he doesn’t seem to intend to show off. “I was hoping someone would find me,” she told him. “I wanted you to find me pretty – dead but pretty. It was just an idea. I haven’t done anything these days, but wait.

Human voice is often described as a gift and a reprimand to the actors, a play composed entirely of a woman alone on stage, talking on the phone to the man who left her to marry someone else, and alternately cuddling, lambasting , reassuring, manipulating and losing control the course of their conversation. It’s a mature material, although it’s not exactly flattering. But Almodóvar has always been more fond of melodramatic impulses, and her performance has more empathy to offer her protagonist, even as she experiences her own lonely collapse. In Almodóvar’s vision, the ax, the drugs, and the final incendiary act are all of one kind, all bizarre gestures with a core of emotional catharsis to them. He’s willing to allow the character’s behavior to be seen as a path to closure, rather than just desperate attempts to keep a relationship that’s already gone. There is a stubborn dignity in the way the character acts, even if he’s falling apart. The film delights in his suffering, not out of a feeling of sadism, but out of a feeling that there is a magnificence in all great emotions, even those that accompany pain. Sometimes you have to burn everything to the ground to start over – or see Tilda Swinton do it in gold lamé pants, which is frankly just as good.