Two great actors anchor the Spanish filmmaker’s first English language feature film about death and friendship.
Plot: Ingrid and Martha were close friends in their youth, when they worked together at the same magazine. Ingrid went on to become an autofiction novelist while Martha became a war reporter. Eventually, they were separated by the circumstances of life. After years of being out of touch, they meet again in an extreme but strangely sweet situation.
Review: The films of prolific director Pedro Almodovar are something of an acquired taste. The Spanish filmmaker is known for imbuing his female-centric stories with melodramatic dialogue and a sense of humor that is as bold as the visuals on screen. For his first feature-length project performed entirely in English, Almodovar cast two of the most talented actors working today, Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, to portray friends reunited after years apart under very difficult circumstances. Leaning heavily into his signature melodrama, Almodovar guides the viewer through a beautifully shot tale of grief and friendship that struggles beneath awkward dialogue about mortality and aging. If not for the strength of the performances from Moore and Swinton, The Room Next Door may not be as critically lauded as it has been.
The Room Next Door opens with author Ingrid (Julianne Moore) at a book signing for her latest novel. Running into an old acquaintance, Ingrid learns that her mutual friend Martha (Tilda Swinton) is in the hospital undergoing treatment for cervical cancer. Not seeing Martha for years, Ingrid decides to visit her, much to Martha’s pleasure. The two instantly fall back into the rhythms of their friendship forged in their twenties as they worked at the same magazine. Since then, Martha became a war correspondent while Martha’s literary career took off. Martha lives solitary, estranged from her adult daughter Michelle (also Swinton). As they spend time together, Martha learns her diagnosis has gotten worse, and she decides she wants to end her own life. Not wanting to depart alone, she asks Ingrid to go away with her, and when Martha decides to end her life, she will have Ingrid in the titular room next door. Honored but wary of the request, Ingrid weighs what she should do, eventually supporting her friend’s decision.
Much of The Room Next Door is focused on casual conversations between Ingrid and Martha. Julianne Moore plays Ingrid as a pleasant person who does not let her emotions alter her mask of support and empathy. As her friend and former lover Damian (John Turturro) says in the film, Ingrid is the only person who can suffer without making others feel guilty about it. After years apart, Ingrid must absorb all of the weight of death and loss emanating from Martha, who has come to terms with the end of her life. Moore is a brilliant actress and has played melodrama well, notably in Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven, but she vacillates here between over-the-top and subtly resilient. Tilda Swinton, who earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress for this film, shifts in her performance as Martha. She relates stories about her time during the war in Iraq or the tale of her younger self (portrayed by Esther McGregor) and Fred, the father of her daughter, Swinton borders on a comically broad emotional performance. But, in the very next scenes, as she copes with trying to find her euthanasia pill or questioning if it is the right day to die, she brings a calm and even-keeled heft to her portrayal of a woman in the final days of her existence. It is moving at once and is a beautiful performance.
For everything that rings true about the characters and events in The Room Next Door, so much of it feels artificial and wooden. While Pedro Almodovar’s recent short film Strange Way of Life starring Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke elicited a solid response from critics and audiences, I struggled with Much of The Room Next Door. As good as Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore have been over their careers, most of their lines in this film cannot be rescued by their acting abilities. Both Ingrid and Martha are wealthy and live with little outside of their means, including renting a massive cabin on Airbnb for a full month replete with a curated selection of movies ranging from Buster Keaton classics to John Huston’s The Dead, the film adaptation of the story that Martha referenced earlier in the film. The home even has a painting that the two debate as to whether it is an original or a replica. The rest of the film is either characters walking, sitting, or talking on the phone. Every conversation is between two individuals outside of three scenes with three characters. Almodovar’s focus on back and forth and monologues often slows the film’s pacing but gives the actors meaty material to dig into. Unfortunately, most of those monologues are littered with cumbersome phrasing and inauthentic reactions.
Almodovar is clearly aiming for a narrative about what it means to enter the final stage of life, with Swinton’s Martha waxing about accepting her fate while John Turturro’s Damian elucidates on the state of the world post-pandemic and the plight of dealing with the climate crisis and the far right political landscape. So much of the film is meant to be about acceptance and dying with dignity, but the political and social messaging feels forced. The ending involving a police investigation also feels out of place to the rest of the story, with the American setting of the film populated by non-American actors outside of Swinton, Moore, and Turturro. The cinematography from Edu Grau is bright and vibrant, and the score by Alberto Iglesias is hauntingly perfect, complimenting the sometimes dour subject matter. A flashback sequence involving a burning house feels like a painting that has come to life, representing so much of Almodovar’s cinematic work. This is a beautiful film to look at.
The Room Next Door is as intriguing as all of Pedro Almodovar’s films, but the move from Spanish to English betrays some of the gaps in the legendary filmmaker’s writing talents. If you go into this film unprepared for the style of acting from the director’s library of films, you may be unprepared to appreciate this project. If not for the subpar dialogue throughout the film, The Room Next Door deals with heavy subject matter and does so respectfully,t if not as subtlety as it could have. Moore and Swinton are good, with the latter continuing to show her talents as a performer through physical presence, even more so than through speaking. This is not a film for everyone, but it shows that dying does not always have to be dark and that filmmakers like Almodovar can even find positivity and hope in sadness.
