Big shorts: films for your weekend watchlist

Make time this weekend for Pedro Almodovar’s lockdown film, ‘The Human Voice’, before journeying to the past with Satyajit Ray and others

When you think of auteurs, it is usually in connection with a feature film or films of theirs, not shorts. Many of them do begin with shorts as calling cards, before going on to global fame with feature films. For example, you may know Martin Scorsese for several features, including Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, but one of the films he cut his cinematic teeth with was the short The Big Shave (1967). Similarly, while you may delight in Christopher Nolan’s work, including Inception and Interstellar, few remember him for the short Doodlebug (1997). What I’m looking at this week is shorts that auteurs made after they’d already achieved international acclaim. Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar was coming off the majestic Pain and Glory (2019) when he directed, in lockdown no less, the 30-minute short The Human Voice (2020). Almodovar had directed several shorts before his breakthrough Pepi, Luci, Bom (1980). But this film, now available in India via bookmyshow, showcases a master working at the height of his powers. A free adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s monodrama of the same name, The Human Voice stars the ethereal Tilda Swinton as a woman who has broken up with someone but can’t get over him or her. It is a solo performance, with Swinton at one end of a phone in a monologue (we can’t hear what her interlocutor is saying).