The Female Voice as Echo in Pedro Almodóvar’s The Human Voice (2020)
Abstract
Pedro Almodóvar’s The Human Voice / La voz humana (2020) can be seen as a meditation on the paradoxes of the female voice in cinema. The fact that it was filmed during the pandemic only serves to intensify the paradoxical nature of the voice: at once spectral and intimate. In this article, I use Almodóvar’s adaptation of Cocteau’s play La voix humaine to explore the extent to which Tilda Swinton’s voice in the role of the protagonist animates vocal apparitions of the other actresses who have held the role before her in an intertextual acoustic network. Drawing on the figure of the mythological Echo, I view Swinton’s performance as an example of vocal singularity and reflect on the ways that this film offers up the female voice as a corrective to the notion of the authority and mastery of the male voice.
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