75
Almodóvar’s work always evokes other artforms beyond the cinema. The Human Voice shows how great texts are malleable: this is his particular take, and not a definitive, canonical edition.
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What are critics saying?
80
New York Magazine (Vulture) by Alison Willmore
The Human Voice is all about the muddied lines between the fabricated and the genuine, and about how much a performance can be divorced from the sincere feelings that might be undergirding it.
100
This small package stands alongside the exemplary feature-length work in one of this generation’s foremost filmographies.
100
Los Angeles Times by Carlos Aguilar
Swinton manifests, with magnificently nuanced modulation, an emotional tangle; at times, it is raw with a cathartic force, while enmeshed with meekly conciliatory moments of codependence. Wielding a hatchet with violent purpose or begging for a final rendezvous, Swinton’s every scorching word cuts deep.
50
Vanity Fair by Cassie da Costa
The Human Voice’s images tend to call out in vain; not an utterance is heard. They are symbols suspended in time and space, indicators of something that doesn’t seem to matter very much.
75
Almodóvar’s work always evokes other artforms beyond the cinema. The Human Voice shows how great texts are malleable: this is his particular take, and not a definitive, canonical edition.
80
The Human Voice, in all its delicious absurdity and kitsch extravagance, ties into the concerns of emotional abandonment and disrupted communication that have long run through his [Almodóvar's] more ostensibly serious works.
91
This is Almodóvar, and so the magnificence is worn lightly, with irony and mischief and a cheeky little moral about how to be a modern woman trapped in the very unmodern role of spurned lover: be hysterical if you want, be philosophical if you can, but never underestimate the liberating power of a little light revenge.
85
It’s a delight no matter how you slice it; for fans, it’s a reminder of what makes Almodóvar such a great director, and for neophytes, it’s an unforgettable introduction.
89
Paste Magazine by Natalia Keogan
Instead of acting as a short, satisfying jaunt through Almodóvar’s aesthetic, The Human Voice is an exercise in deconstructing the very tenets the filmmaker has propped himself on throughout the entirety of his career.
91
It’s a sharp if slightly caricatured portrait of despair and loneliness — and, indeed, madness and melancholy.