Almodóvar and Tilda Swinton start filming English short

As multiple Goya-winner Almodóvar revealed in February, he had always wanted to make a film in English, but as he does not speak the language, he wrote the script in Spanish and has had it translated.

The Human Voice sees Swinton, 59, the sole cast member, as a character living alone with her dog talking to her lover for the last time on the telephone.

Cambridge graduate, schoolmate of Lady Diana Spencer and great-great-granddaughter of Scottish botanist John Hutton Balfour, Tilda instantly attracted Almodóvar's attention for the part, and he said they clicked straight away.

“She's exactly as I imagined her; open, intelligent – we understood each other, and very closely,” he said in February after cleaning up at the Goyas, Spain's answer to the Oscars, for his semi-autobiographical film Dolor y Gloria ('Pain and Glory'), starring legendary Málaga-born actor Antonio Banderas.

Almodóvar, 70, said it was Cocteau's La Voix Humaine which inspired his classic off-the-wall 1988 comedy, Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios ('Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown').

The Human Voice has already been transferred from page to screen, firstly in France in 1930 and later on stage and film on at least two other occasions, with the lead rôle fleshed out by international-calibre actresses such as Anna Magnani, Simone Signoret and Ingrid Bergman.

Almodóvar's English version was due to start filming in April in Madrid, with a view to its being entered in the 2020 autumn film festivals, but the pandemic put paid to these plans and forced the big-screen giant from Calzada de Calatrava (Ciudad Real province, Castilla-La Mancha) to shelve shooting for the time being.

His brother Agustín Almodóvar tweeted a photo of the director and lone actress today (Thursday) on their first day of filming, both in masks, as shown above (@AgustinAlmo on Twitter).