This modernised adaptation of Jean Cocteau's play sees Pedro Almodóvar setting an anguished stage of loneliness and abandonment.
The in-between can be very treacherous territory, neither here nor there, up or down, awake or dreaming. The mind is racked with indecision and clawing anticipation which tears through the synapses. What is one supposed to do with themselves other than stew in the boiling pot of their own demon juices? Those horribly spine-twisting thoughts which one can normally hold back, gain greater insistence and come back with a hunger. Your mind becomes food and your soul that wispy drink. You’ll be left empty while at the same time full of the most loathsome feeling of being ripped apart. I should know, I’m there right now.
But that’s a matter to be handled another time. My mind though in the now, is tenuously tethered to a body which is somewhere reeling in the in-between. Which is also where our eyes are stuck with Tilda Switon in Pedro Almodóvar’s The Human Voice (2020). Quite loosely based off of Jean Cocteau’s play, it brings the original source material into a modern stage, an era where we don’t shy away from talk of insanity and derangement. Tilda Swinton waits and waits by the belongings of her ex-lover as she spends one moment to the next totally consumed by the whims of pain and emotional turmoil, so much so that she starts to lost certainty in her own dwindling sanity. When she finally gets a phone call from her former lover, she goes through one hole and out the other, over and over, finding herself in completely different and capricious states of mind.
Once thing becomes exceedingly apparent from the very first frame of this short, the lighting is absolutely remarkable. It cleans the edges up with such smoothness that everything within the frame looks like its shaped and contoured with pure virgin light. Every possible detail which is undulating within Tilda’s expression are illuminated with the natural ease of light simply falling upon her face, we don’t miss a single profound shift of inner emotion which has a way of becoming completely imperceptible on one’s countenances. We are crammed into this claustrophobic space with her, boxed in with pain through extreme close-ups which are seething in anguish and then taken as far away as the walls of this artificial stage will allow to show us just how much the space is thrilling with the unendurable vibrations of excruciation.
This film is very much aware of its provenance from the stage and it holds onto it through the set design which is nothing more than a mere open ceiling floor-plan upon a stage in some studio somewhere. The phone into which she’s desperately pouring her entreaties, like a gardener showering a beloved flower that is too far gone, takes on all the characteristics of her recent lover, not being present, turning her whole conversation into a sort of soliloquy. When one considers that this a conversation she needs to have, the interpretations remain open whether the talk needs to be had more with herself or her lover.
Each visual node of the film belies the agony which is flowing underneath. Those bright coloured interiors and costumes are but a stark façade facing out to the world, hiding a sinister force which is constantly probing to tip the balance and devour. A glimpse of that roaring flame is seen when Tilda sets the whole stage ablaze in a cleansing rite of acceptance and abandonment. Her life up until now has becomes too stained with the memories of her ex-lover, she has gone through too much with him and must now start all over, abandon that old life and burn the slate to ash.
I was meant to keep this one as short and concentrated as the film I’m covering, but to hell with it, my mind is trying to expel as much to keep up with the natural convalescence my body must go through after a long and crushing day at work. Days piled upon days of long 12-hour shifts have left me in a cadaverous state; a blister the size of a ping-pong ball is beginning to form on my foot, my body is covered in unexplainable scars and cuts, my nerves are being treated like candy at the hands of robotic implements in a factory, my entire body feels as stiff as a thousand-year-old oak tree and just as heavy too. My sleep cycle is in such deplorable state that the only way to fix it will be to hibernate for a whole month. In spite of all the hellish effects my body is currently at the cruelty of, my mind is as sharp as a blade right now. There’s something about wading through these infernal mires that excites me, an excitement which is numbing the pain. My mind is definitely not where my body is right now, I wonder what will happen once both are united and effects synchronised? Perhaps I’ll be overcome with the most monumental pain that’ll just cause my immediate death. Maybe I’m being a bit over dramatic here.
Christ on a goddamn bike I’ve really flown off the path into the bowels of a tangent here. There was a definite reason why I abandoned the thread for a minute and began waffling about my physical adversities. Ah yes, the crumbling effects of the in-between. Somewhere in there is a notion that Tilda’s mind is going through the same treatment as my body at the moment, knocked out of a continuum yet in eternal unstoppable movement. When you can’t stop yourself is the worst thing. When you try your damndest to regain control over your own wheel but are knocked aside is a feeling of such tremendous weakness which is rivalled by little. The best you can do in those circumstances is just give up control for a moment, let the violent rocking of the boat even out enough that you can at least see the waters ahead.
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