I’m hyping a short today because The Human Voice pairs Pedro Almodóvar with Tilda Swinton, and I think we’ll all take as much of that as we can get.
With a reported run time of 30 minutes, this is nowhere near feature-length, but there’s still plenty of time for stuff to go down. From the trailer, what appears to be going on is yearning and the color red. Seriously, there’s red in almost every shot, which gives this a real We Need to Talk About Kevin vibe. Ominous, for sure, and the mood seems to be caused by the missing person whose clothes are mysteriously laid out on the bed.
This is a move away from the norm in many ways for Almodóvar, who rarely does shorts but more significantly has never done an English-language feature before. This short (also in English) was intended to be a warm-up for just that, but of course, his planned adaptation of Lucia Berlin’s novel A Manual for Cleaning Women has been delayed by the pandemic.
Still, this is no throwaway exercise. The Human Voice is itself an adaptation of the Jean Cocteau one-act play of the same name, and with the likes of Swinton, Almodóvar, and a cute dog behind it, it’s sure to be its own stunning piece.
The Human Voice is directed by Pedro Almodóvar and stars Tilda Swinton. It is currently scheduled to be released in theaters in the US on March 5th, 2021. For international release dates, click here.
Will you check this one out? Let us know in the comments!
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