Midway through Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language film The Room Next Door, I was struck by what I felt was a simple (too simple?), straight-forward narrative, particularly for an Almodóvar film. I was absorbed in the pic, but I didn’t feel it was anything special. By the final shot, I was transported and gobsmacked by a staggering feeling I had just witnessed truly profound cinema.
The Room Next Door, adapted from segments of Sigrid Nunez’s novel What Are You Going Through, tells the story of two friends who were estranged for a time. Mercifully, we are never told why, but they come together later in life, developing a deep and unwavering bond. While at a book signing, best-selling author Ingrid (Julianne Moore) is told that her former war correspondent friend Martha (Tilda Swinton) is battling cancer. Ingrid rushes to see her in hospital, and the two rekindle their friendship.
Martha’s condition is quite serious, and she undergoes an experimental treatment that, unfortunately, does not work. She is going to die and decides that it will be on her terms — with dignity and, hopefully, with Ingrid’s help. Martha requests she move into a gorgeous home she’s purchased in Woodstock, NY, with her and be in the room next door when she decides to take her euthanasia pill, which she acquired on the dark web. There is much dialogue about death and Martha’s decision, which she doesn’t make lightly, as well as why it should be up to her and only her. Naturally, Ingrid is apprehensive, at first.
Moore delivers a lovely performance full of revelation. Her Ingrid is forever changed by Martha and by a final reel character I will not reveal. Swinton is a luminous marvel. Her Martha is so layered and so raw that we can’t help but empathize with her plight to the point where it becomes painful. Swinton’s face tells us her astonishing story. She’s lived a full life and will soon be ravaged, mind, body and spirit. It’s an emotionally devastating performance.
Swinton should have won the Best Actress Oscar for 2011’s We Need to Talk About Kevin but wasn’t even nominated that year. Venice introduced three supremely worthy lead female acting performances into the Oscar race: Angelina Jolie (Maria), Nicole Kidman (Babygirl), and Swinton. Of the three, Swinton most deserves the win (albeit in the Supporting category where she will be placed… which I think is truly unfair as she is a definite lead).
The film’s score, cinematography, production, and costume design are all terrific as is the norm in Almodóvar.
James Joyce’s The Dead (the novel and John Huston film) figures rather importantly in the movie and there are echoes of Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen. Ultimately, the film is pure Almodóvar. No other male filmmaker could present such a deeply affecting, authentic portrait of two very different women who come to love and understand each other.
The Room Next Door is transcendent cinema.
