The Human Voice (DVD) – Movie Review
We love all kinds of movies and series here on 3rd-strike.com, and we try to cover titles ranging from the smallest indie projects to the big-hitters from Hollywood. This time we will not be covering a full-feature-length movie, but a short with Tilda Swinton in the lead. While the actress has a lot of experience already, many may know her from somewhat more fantasy-inspired roles. Now, she puts both feet firmly on the ground again and dons the suit of a distraught woman, hoping her cheating husband will come home. Be it to teach him a lesson, of fall into his arms, we’ll never know. As this movie is only around thirty minutes in length, our review will be slightly shorter than usual.
The story in The Human Voice is actually quite simple. We see an unnamed woman (Tilda Swinton) wait at home until her husband picks up his stuff, either hoping to hurt him or for him to come crawling back. Sadly, this never happens and she’ll have to make do with a phone call, after waiting for four days. From here on out, the short film turns into a long phone conversation, where we can only hear one side of the events. We see a passionate woman be enraged, sad, or even happy, all in the course of thirty short minutes. The movie is further highlighted by its colorful decors, where the woman seemingly goes from one colorful outfit to another, adding a certain touch of class to this ‘break-up’ experience.
Tilda Swinton delivers a phenomenal performance in The Human Voice. Even though the film is actually just a 30-minute monologue of the actress, as we do not hear the person on the receiving end, it’s still quite entertaining. The emotions that she conveys add to the movie’s somewhat grim atmosphere, and you can properly sense her despair. It’s not an easy feat doing such a performance on your own.
The DVD version of The Human Voice comes with a 45-minute interview with Tilda Swinton and Pedro Almodóvar. It’s in a way quite funny to have an interview that is actually a lot longer than the feature film, but it’s also interesting to see what the idea and concept behind this creative piece was. As the movie is loosely based on a play, it’s also nice to learn more about the source material. Keep in mind, however, the interview has no subtitles but is conducted in English. Even though there could have been a few other interesting extras to go with this experience, we were quite impressed having such a lengthy extra present on a physical copy. We also immediately have to point out the absence of special features on many big releases throughout the last few months, which could have also opted to add Zoom interviews or other commentaries to their releases as is the case here.
Conclusion
It’s hard to judge a physical release of a short such as this. The quality is undeniably there, and it is a very interesting experience and one that does evoke certain feelings and thoughts throughout the 30 minutes The Human Voice spans. If it warrants actually buying a physical copy, we are not completely sure. We loved what was on display, we enjoyed the long interview that came with it, and we appreciate that this DVD version is on sale for half the price of a normal release. These all contribute to actually experiencing this short at least once. To further conclude this review, we enjoyed this bite-sized experience and we reckon those liking this type of film will also think the same.
The Human Voice (DVD) - Movie Review,
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