This review of “The Human Voice” was first published after its premiere at the New York Film Festival on Sept. 24, 2020.
Cinema history will doubtlessly note “The Human Voice” as notable for being the English-language debut of Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar — and for its status as a pandemic-driven production — but it’s absolute Almodóvar through and through, from its production design and aesthetic shout-outs to its deep understanding of longing and heartbreak, viewed through the eyes (and the voice) of a hypnotic female lead.
There’s perhaps no actress on Earth more suited to shepherd the director’s first go-round in English than Tilda Swinton, and she’s an ideal creative partner. Her work finds that balance between understated empathy and grand theatricality that marks so many of the great performances in Almodóvar’s work, and as a physical being, she’s practically an architectural presence, much like one of his earlier muses, Rossy de Palma. (Not to mention Swinton’s prior track record as a muse to queer auteurs Derek Jarman, who launched her film career, and Luca Guadagnino.)
Almodóvar, of course, has a history with Jean Cocteau’s “The Human Voice” (which the director is, per the credits, “freely” adapting here). In the 1980s, Almodóvar had hoped to turn Carmen Maura’s acclaimed stage performance of the one-act play into a movie, but he wanted to expand the material to feature length. In doing so, he kept the basic premise — a woman waits for her lover to call and bid her farewell — but eventually chopped and channeled it into the farcical “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” his international breakthrough. (He also included a scene of Maura’s character performing the play in “Law of Desire,” which gets its title from “The Human Voice.”)
Three decades later, he returns to Cocteau, and the results are mesmerizing; the film runs a brisk 27 minutes, but contains more characterization, style, and emotion than most features. Swinton takes on the role of Cocteau’s nameless heroine, at her wit’s end; her lover has been gone for three days, his bags are packed, and he hasn’t called, he hasn’t called, he hasn’t called.
She purchases a hatchet (from the director’s brother and producer, Agustín Almodóvar, who wraps up the ax like a bouquet of flowers), she downs a handful of sleeping pills (some of the screen’s most photogenic downers this side of “Valley of the Dolls”), and then, finally, he calls, and the woman finally gets the confrontation that she has both demanded and feared.
Swinton wrings so much from Cocteau’s words, taking us from woman-scorned rage to a kind of ecstastic masochism and back again, moving her way through another great Almodóvar apartment art-directed by Antxón Gómez when she’s not wandering around the soundstage that surrounds the set. It’s a pandemic-friendly way to keep Swinton from having to walk the streets of Madrid, yes, but it’s also a Brechtian strategy that recalls the aggressively fake city skyline in “Women on the Verge.”
Besides the various Almodóvar relatives that pop up in the hardware-store scene, Swinton does get to act opposite another performer — the uncredited canine who plays her lover’s equally forlorn dog. It’s a great animal performance, full of longing; not many co-stars can hold the screen with Swinton without getting outshined, but this one definitely can.
For all the ways in which “The Human Voice” is different from the rest of Almodóvar’s work, it fits in perfectly well, from the deep reds (in the apartment and in Swinton’s Balenciaga dress) to the cultural referencing: Swinton tidies up a stack of DVDs (two of which are Criterion Collection Blu-rays from one of the director’s inspirations, Douglas Sirk) and novels (including Capote’s “Music for Chameleons,” which comes up in “All About My Mother,” and Lucia Berlin’s “A Manual for Cleaning Women,” which Almodóvar plans to adapt).
Short subjects tend to fall between the cracks in the United States — Sony Pictures Classics, who will be distributing “The Human Voice,” hopes to be an exception to that rule — but this small package stands alongside the exemplary feature-length work in one of this generation’s foremost filmographies. Cocteau might never have imagined ear buds when he wrote his play, but every bit of emotional ache from the original maintains its power in the smartphone era.
The Evolution of Tilda Swinton, From 'Orlando' to 'The Human Voice' (Photos)
Tilda Swinton is basically the David Bowie of film, a multi-faceted, eccentric chameleon who is equally comfortable in experimental, art house cinema, character-driven indies as she is in massive blockbusters. It helps that she's a spitting image of the late Bowie, too. In a 30-plus-year career, between acting, performance art, theatre and more, it's less about Swinton being increasingly adventurous and more about how even mainstream audiences have come to accept her frequent innovations and daring transformations. Here's how Swinton has evolved.
"Caravaggio" (1986)
Tilda Swinton's first film was the experimental drama "Caravaggio," kicking off a long, working relationship with director Derek Jarman. It's a fictionalized look at the life of Michelangelo and also is the film debut of actor Sean Bean.
British Film Institute
"Orlando" (1992)
Swinton landed the lead role in Sally Potter's Elizabethan-era drama "Orlando," an adaptation of the Virginia Woolf book. It was the first example of Swinton exploring androgynous characters on screen, for which she's come to be known.
Sony Pictures Classics
"The Beach" (2000)
Swinton kicked off a string of bigger budget studio projects at the turn of the century, starting with a small part opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Danny Boyle's adventure "The Beach," as well as Cameron Crowe's "Vanilla Sky" in 2001. She appeared in "Adaptation" with a very sweaty Nicolas Cage in 2002 and was eventually opposite Keanu Reeves in "Constantine" in 2005.
Twentieth Century Fox
"The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" (2005)
For the adaptation of C.S. Lewis's iconic "Chronicles of Narnia" novels, Swinton played the villainous White Witch, bringing her icy glare, exotic fashion sense and intensity to the otherwise campy children's fantasy. It's as though Swinton saw David Bowie in "Labyrinth" and thought, "I need to do that." Swinton would reprise her role in several of the film's sequels.
Walt Disney Pictures
"Michael Clayton" (2007)
Swinton won an Oscar for Tony Gilroy's legal drama "Michael Clayton" opposite George Clooney. Her performance is as clean cut and precise as her "Narnia" performance is crazed and intense. But as Karen Crowder, she shows a lot of range as a legal executive, who's both powerful and in control while desperately trying to hide that she's in way over her head. She'd follow up this part with several other prestige roles, including the Coen Brothers' "Burn After Reading" and David Fincher's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," both opposite Brad Pitt.
Warner Bros.
"I Am Love" (2009)
Tilda Swinton is neither Italian nor Russian, but in "I Am Love," her second film with Luca Guadagnino, she spoke in a Russian accent and learned Italian for the part. She gives a measured, soul-searching performance in Guadagnino's lush, colorful film as part of a family of Italian aristocrats, navigating family dynamics, inheritance and infidelity.
Magnolia Pictures
"We Need to Talk About Kevin" (2011)
By far Swinton's most devastating and emotionally intense performance, in Lynne Ramsay's "We Need to Talk About Kevin," she plays a woman who has been changed by motherhood and is now plagued by her own worse fears and impulses. Her son Kevin seems to have loathed his mother from the day he was born, but both Swinton's performance and Ramsay's handling of the material leaves doubt, mystery and suspicion as to whether Kevin is truly vindictive or if she has actually been neglectful his whole life.
Oscilloscope Pictures
The Maybe (2013)
Swinton made a lot of noise with the press and with art critics by literally not making a sound. For hours at a time, Swinton came to the Museum of Modern Art to sleep inside a glass box. The piece, called "The Maybe," was Swinton's way of evoking quiet contemplation and thought. She wasn't the first performance artist to sleep inside a museum, and in fact, her 2013 rendition was a remake of when she performed in 1995 with artist Cornelia Parker.
M Liao/Flickr
"The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" (2013)
We already knew Bowie and Swinton were kindred spirits, and in this music video for Bowie's song "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)," the two actually play a married couple. Floria Sigismondi's video along with Bowie's song flips the celebrity-obsessed culture idea on its head, with tabloid stars parading around the streets like zombies infecting the minds of perfectly wholesome couples. It's a fiendishly surreal piece of satire, and Swinton fits the part beautifully.
Vevo
"Snowpiercer" (2013)
Swinton brings a devilish sense of humor to Joon-ho Bong's dystopian and otherwise grim "Snowpiercer." She plays another androgynous-looking authority figure aboard a perpetually moving train, spitting and fidgeting with her glasses as she condescends to people at the back of the train she views as lower class citizens.
Radius-TWC
"The Grand Budapest Hotel" (2014)
Swinton is hilariously ancient and nearly unrecognizable as an octogenarian patron bedded by Ralph Fiennes's character in Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel." She learned how an old woman might apply makeup and lipstick in order to make her character realistic and funnier, and she played ball when Wes Anderson requested "more liver spots" on her face.
Fox Searchlight Pictures
"Doctor Strange" (2016)
It turns out even Tilda Swinton isn't above starring in a Marvel movie. As The Ancient One in "Doctor Strange," she donned a shaved bald head and a zen confidence as she manipulated time and space. The part was a gender-flipped take from the comics, but her casting was also maligned as being white washed.
Marvel
"Okja" (2017)
Swinton reunited with Joon-ho Bong to give another characteristically bonkers and satirically twisted performance, this time as twin sisters Lucy and Nancy Mirando. She channels Ivanka Trump as the head of a food conglomerate, chewing the scenery with a gaudy pink suit, bleached blonde bangs, a wicked glint in her eye and a giddy laugh as she delivers nonsensical corporate PR speak.
Netflix
"Suspiria" (2018)
When "Suspiria" first premiered, Swinton denied that she was playing three roles in the film, including one of an elderly psychologist under pounds of makeup and prosthetics. Both she and director Luca Guadagnino insisted that the role was played by first-time actor Lutz Ebersdorf. They even read a statement from Ebersdorf when "he" couldn't attend the film's premiere. But months later in a semantic twist, Swinton revealed she wasn't portraying the character in "Suspiria," but she was in fact portraying the actor who plays him in the film.
Tilda Swinton, left and right, in "Suspiria" (Photo credit: Amazon Studios)
"The Human Voice" (2020)
Swinton gives a one-woman show in "The Human Voice," Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar's colorful English-language debut. The short film is a liberal adaptation of a Jean Cocteau play as she acts up a storm waiting for her lover who is about to leave her to call. It's arguably the best performance ever put to film in which the lead actress is wearing Apple AirPods for the majority of the runtime.
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The experimental, often androgynous British actress has gone through many transformations on screen
Tilda Swinton is basically the David Bowie of film, a multi-faceted, eccentric chameleon who is equally comfortable in experimental, art house cinema, character-driven indies as she is in massive blockbusters. It helps that she's a spitting image of the late Bowie, too. In a 30-plus-year career, between acting, performance art, theatre and more, it's less about Swinton being increasingly adventurous and more about how even mainstream audiences have come to accept her frequent innovations and daring transformations. Here's how Swinton has evolved.
British Film Institute
