Director: Pedro Almodóvar (Spain). Year of Release: 2020/2023
A woman in a bright red dress. The top is tight, but the skirt part balloons around her legs. She walks around elegantly. As she sits down, the camera focuses on her legs which are now dressed in black trousers. The camera moves up her body, and the elegant red has all been replaced with dour black. Opening titles appear on screen saying: “Based loosely on the 1930 monologue play by Jean Cocteau.”
Cut to: a hardware store where the same woman is wearing a blue dress and dark square glasses. She is staring intently at the collection of axes on the wall and carries a dog on a lead. An assistant approaches, and although all talk until now has been in Spanish, he addresses her in English. Maybe it’s because he’s noticed that it’s only Tilda Swinton. She points out an axe on the wall and he tells her it’s €50. She pays for it, and he wraps it in a paper bag, which she puts in her handbag.
The woman returns home, and wanders around her flat which is alternately decorated in primary colours (this is a Pedro Almodóvar film, after all) and indistinct greys. At one stage, the camera rises above the room to show us that this is little more than set design. At other times, we are inside an expensive loft apartment filled with books, videos, and coffee machines into which you insert a tab so that it can pour out a drink which only fills half of a cup.
An internal monologue refers to events which have been going on for 4 years but suddenly changed a few days ago. Some packed suitcases are waiting in the hallway. A black suit (which will later receive the brunt of the axe bought in the opening scene) is lying on the bed. The woman pads around her flat, waiting for something. Finally, she takes what sensationalist reporters refer to a “cocktail of pills” (they are colour-coordinated, of course) and goes to bed.
A little later, the telephone rings. Twice. The woman speaks, although we only hear her side of the conversation. We gather that she is talking to a recent ex who she is not going to see again. The pills that she necked were not a serious suicide attempt, but an attempt to gain his attention. After a conversation which shows all 5 signs of grief she makes her peace with her former lover and we watch her come to terms with the end of the relationship.
End credits. Time for the next film.
The Wild West. A cowboy, Silva, rides into time. We can tell that he’s exotic as he speaks with an accent and pronounces Mexico Mehico. He finds the sheriff Jake. with whom he has unfinished business. On the one hand, they were old friends – lovers indeed. On the other, Jake is about to arrest Silva’s son who has been accused of killing someone, and was identified leaving the scene of the crime because of his pronounced limp (L-I-M-P, pronounced limp).
One thing leads to another, and the next morning Silva wakes up in Jake’s bed without his underpants. Jake says that they’d just been drinking too much and urges his old friend to leave. Silva, though, is still trying to save his son. And, he says, he would like to continue his relationship with Jake. The sheriff is suspicious, asking if Silva really was interested in carrying on where they left off, why wait 25 years until exactly the point when he needs a favour?
The next day, Jake continues his search for Silva’s son. But Silva has got there first and is urging his boy to leave as soon as he can. This ends up in a literal Mexican stand-off between sheriff, old friend and suspected murderer / old friend’s son. This felt to me to be a little to clichéd for an Almodóvar film. Yes I know we need to follow the old Western conventions, but if you follow them too closely, you end up less with satire and more with uninspiring repetition.
The Human Voice and Strange Way of Life were showing together, which kind of makes sense as each film is around 30 minutes long, which doesn’t really justify the cost of a ticket on its own. Both were directed by Almodóvar at the opposite ends of lockdown, and showing them both is certainly an interesting look at how one of our most foremost directors reacted to the limitations on filming during this period.
But are they any good? Well, to a degree. Almodóvar has always been a stylish director, and we see plenty here to remind us why. But sometimes this style comes at the expense of substance. While I think it’s great that in recent years, the great director has come much closer than ever to making politically committed statements, his films occasionally spend more energy in looking good than saying anything significant. This is a greater danger in a short, which lacks the time to say much.
Of course, the acting is great, especially The Human Voice, which stars Tilda Swinton in imperious form. Just listening to her enunciate is like attending an acting masterclass. When she is talking to her ex on the phone, you are less following what it is that she is saying than marvelling in the way she is saying it. Strange Way of Life is also played by acting nobility, although Ethan Hawke’s performance is not as captivating as Swinton’s.
But the problem is that you don’t care enough for the characters. Swinton plays a privileged woman in a luxury flat who can’t come to terms with the fact that her ex has no more time for her. Maybe it’s just me but I find it hard to empathise. And I have a general problem with the cowboy genre. Kudos for inserting the gay subtext, but men seeking their way in the wild frontier never really did it for me.
Summary: I think the films are watching as a museum piece, and that Almodóvar is not capable of being uninteresting. They are an interesting addition to a great body of work. But there are few huge revelations here. We spend our time more being impressed by the art in which the scenes are presented than in a sense that we’re learning much new. If you manage your expectations, there’s enough to enjoy here, but Almodóvar has done better and probably will do better again.
CinePhil 