The Human Voice

Working primarily in English for the first time, Pedro Almodóvar adapts Jean Cocteau’s one-act play about a woman on one end of a telephone call, who gradually falls apart as her lover ends a longterm affair. This highly precise featurette is a showcase for a bracing, multifaceted performance by Tilda Swinton, acting for the man on the line while showing us a very different emotional reality. Almodóvar combines his customarily eye-popping mise en scène with the frank theatricality of a soundstage, yielding a reality as precarious as that of the protagonist. (Michael Sicinski)

With INTIMATE DISTANCES.