SOURCE: Willem, Linda M. “Almodóvar on the Verge of Cocteau's La Voix humaine.” Literature/Film Quarterly 26, no. 2 (1998): 142-47.

In the following essay, Willem judges the influence of Cocteau's La Voix humaine on Pedro Almodóvar's film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

Jean Cocteau's one-act play, La Voix humaine [The Human Voice], consists entirely of a monologue by a woman engaged in a final phone conversation with her lover. Alone in her room, she desperately clings to the telephone as her only link to the man who has left her for someone else. Although this agonizing portrait of abandonment and despair bears little resemblance to Almodóvar's multi-charactered comedic romp through the streets of Madrid in Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios [Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown], Cocteau's play has been named as the source of inspiration for that film...