Dir/Wri: Pedro Almodovar | Cast: Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, John Turturro | Drama 108’
Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton are the Oscar-winning stars of this penetrating character drama that sees two writer friends reunited in the current day after they first met in the 1980s.
Martha (Swinton), suffering from cancer, has decided to end her life after a terminal diagnosis and asks Ingrid (Moore) to stay in the room next door in a rented holiday home, where she intends to take an illegal pill procured on the dark web.
Euthanasia is a hot topic in the news at a moment when many find themselves alone, estranged from family or friendless, when faced with an unbearable illness. In his first film in English Pedro Almodovar bravely tackles a highly emotive subject head on, and he clearly fervently believes in it. And this is not the first of his films about facing fears and doubts, Pain and Glory explored the subject back in 2019, but that was more autobiographical. Here he projects the idea onto a female friendship, his stock in trade, as we saw in Women on the Verge and Talk to Her amongst others.
It’s also true to say that Almodovar’s films always feel slightly angst-ridden, even his comedies. There is always deep-seated anxiety and a Hitchcockian undertone to his work and The Room Next Door revisits the same territory, with the same dull, discordant primary colours, in a story that takes place in lonely woods and alienating New York skylines.
Even when Tilda’s character is upbeat it all feels desperately doom-laden, with Moore cast as her ever faithful friend, even though the two haven’t seen each other for decades. The false bonhomie Ingrid exudes in her efforts to gee her friend along is forced and quite frankly false, unless she has an ulterior motive of using this experience as material for her next book. The two of them get along like the Bobbsey Twins with rarely a cross word or a confrontation – quite something considering their lack of closeness; but maybe this lack of an intimate past is what’s needed to accompany someone to their demise.
Moore’s character is a ‘yes woman’; an eternal martyr who seems to take the weight of Martha’s angst on her delicate shoulders. Meanwhile Martha quite understandingly veers from depression to acceptance – and sometimes even relief – at her impending doom. And that’s the film’s most valuable take-away. Tilda has never looked so drawn and dissipated than in this latest incarnation which she embraces full-heartedly in a tour de force that feels brave and unflinching.
With the help of these two experienced actors Almodovar manages to convey his ideas on euthanasia and death with subtlety and restraint in a tribute to all those forced to suffer the indignity of dying a slow and painful death. Few of us are frightened of death but what we dread is the pain and loss of control and dignity, and this is also the thrust of Almodovar’s nuanced narrative. @MeredithTaylor
THE ROOM NEXT DOOR | GOLDEN LION winner VENICE 2024
Joanna Hogg is the only living female filmmaker who portrays a particular English contemporary milieu. Usually creative, invariably white and well-educated, these characters are liberal in outlook and mostly live in London. With such unique sensibilities and vision she is able to understand and convey as certain type of middle class angst (borne out of having to do the right thing, irrespective of personal choice). She did it gracefully in Unrelated (2007), Archipelago (2010) and Exhibition (2013), And she does it peerlessly again here with The Souvenir, a nuanced and delicately drawn story of addiction and strained relationships that very much echoes its time and place: the late 1980s – although it was inspired and takes its name from Fragonard’s painting, a motif that runs through the film.