‘The Human Voice’ review: Tilda Swinton revels in Almodóvar’s short film

In his first English feature, the director has made the restrictions of the pandemic his strengths

For his first English feature, Pedro Almodóvar chooses to “freely adapt” Jean Cocteau’s 1930 monodrama. The statuesque Tilda Swinton plays an actor of a certain age, with a face that is “a mixture of melancholy and madness.” She has been waiting for three days for her departing lover to pick up his suitcases and his dog, Dash, who clearly is distressed by the absence of his master. . Apart from the opening sequence where Swinton’s character (she is not named) goes to a hardware to store to buy a little axe (gosh what is she going to do with it?), the rest of the film is set in a beautifully appointed apartment. The apartment feels simultaneously claustrophobic and spacious.