The Room Next Door, 2024.
Directed by Pedro Almodóvar.
Starring Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, John Turturro, Alessandro Nivola.
SYNOPSIS:
Ingrid and Martha were close friends in their youth, when they worked together at the same magazine. After years of being out of touch, they meet again in an extreme but strangely sweet situation.
Pedro Almodóvar is one of European Cinema’s most recognisable names, known for the likes of Volver, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Pain and Glory. In recent years he has begun making projects in the English language with shorts The Human Voice and Strange Way of Life. His debut feature in the English language is the much anticipated The Room Next Door, with added buzz around the pairing of Oscar winners Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore.
We follow Ingrid and Martha, colleagues and friends from their youth, who reunite in their 60s as Martha is diagnosed with terminal cancer. It is adapted from Sigrid Nunez’s novel What Are You Going Through. It is seen as an awards prospect following its Golden Bear win at Venice Film Festival.
The friendship between the pair is the film’s central thread with Ingrid a writer, who’s latest book is on how to come to terms with death while Martha was a prominent war journalist. The two actors are one of the main draws, in a truly all-star pairing, they share natural chemistry with their friendship believable. We see the pair relax, watching Buster Keaton and John Huston’s The Dead (a film and book referenced throughout the film), moments like this add a sense of lightness to what can be quite heavy subject matter.
Martha asks Ingrid to help her take her life in the ‘room next door’ a decision that weighs heavily on her consciousness and the legal and moral issues that would come with it. This is of course a highly contentious issue that has split governments the world over and is delicately dealt with here.
While there are plenty of Almodóvar’s trademark flourishes, including strong central protagonists and their relationships with each other and the striking use of colour, especially red, some of the dialogue can feel a tad stilted and perhaps this may have flowed better in Spanish. Some questionable decisions in the film’s final moments may take some viewers out of the film.
The Room Next Door’s success rests on the shoulders of its two iconic leads, who make for a gripping duo. While some of the nuance of the script may not flow as naturally as in his best Spanish language work, there is plenty to admire. It will be interesting to follow whether this is the first of many English language films or more of an outlier in his filmography.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Chris Connor
