The Human Voice

A woman waits in her apartment with the packed suitcases of her former lover, who is meant to collect them but never arrives. Keeping her company is a dog that cannot grasp that its owner has gone. Over three days of waiting, she leaves the house only once, to buy an axe and a can of petrol. Her state swings between helplessness and despair as she dresses up as if for a party, contemplates stepping off the balcony, and drifts into unconsciousness after taking pills. The dog licks her face until she comes round.

Pedro Almodóvar wrote and directed this thirty-minute drama, the eighteenth of the twenty-two films he has directed in chronological order, following Pain and Glory and preceding Parallel Mothers. It was produced by Esther García and Agustín Almodóvar through El Deseo, and it is a Spanish and American co-production. Tilda Swinton plays the woman, the only substantial role, while Agustín Almodóvar appears briefly as a cashier. The film is loosely based on Jean Cocteau's monologue of the same name, with the telephone call standing in for the absent partner.

The film drew strong notices from critics, whose rating of 8.1 out of 10 from 63 reviews is well above the audience scores of 6.8 on IMDb from around 10,000 votes and 6.7 on TMDB from roughly 260 votes. The gap suggests a work that reviewers admired more readily than general viewers did, and the modest vote counts reflect its status as a short film rather than a full-length release.