La voix humaine

In a Paris apartment, a woman clings to the telephone for one last conversation with the lover who is leaving her for someone else — her voice cracking between denial, rage, tenderness, and pure devastation as the connection keeps cutting out. Roger Avary’s intimate French-language feature adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s legendary 1930 one-woman monodrama stars Elsa Zylberstein in a tour-de-force performance of emotional free-fall, turning the simple act of a phone call into a raw, almost unbearable portrait of love’s final unraveling. Shot with austere intensity, this rarely seen complete film version of Cocteau’s masterpiece is a pure actor’s showcase and a heartbreaking chamber piece of modern heartbreak.