Certificate: 12A
Running Time: 107 mins
UK Distributor: Warner Bros
UK Release Date: 25 October 2024
Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore, John Turturro, Alessandro Nivola, Juan Diego Botta, Melina Matthews, Raúl Arévalo, Victoria Luengo, Esther McGregor, Alex Høgh Andersen, Alvise Rigo
Pedro Almodóvar (director, writer), Agustín Almodóvar (producer), Alberto Iglesias (composer), Eduard Grau (cinematographer), Teresa Font (editor)
Two old friends (Swinton and Moore) are reunited under difficult circumstances…
When Pedro Almodóvar first announced that he would be making an English-language feature for the first time in his career, some concern began to spread that the Spanish auteur’s signature tone and style might not translate that well. Though he made a couple of strong practise runs with his short films The Human Voice and Strange Way of Life, Almodóvar’s melodramatic tendencies are not as common within English-speaking entertainment outside of dramatic soap operas, so a film like The Room Next Door could either be a failed experiment or a triumphant continuation of his universal appeal.
Luckily, it’s the latter. Not only does Almodóvar successfully bring his particular flavour to a much wider audience outside his native Spain as well as loyal arthouse crowds, but the filmmaker has also made a truly profound and deeply effective drama that carries plenty of his familiar attributes that are put to compelling and thoughtful use here.
Set in New York, The Room Next Door follows Ingrid (Julianne Moore), an author who learns that her old friend, war correspondent Martha (Tilda Swinton), is in the hospital undergoing cancer treatment. The friends are quick to resume their plentiful friendship, one that had been put on pause due to their busy lives, but after Martha learns that the treatment is no longer working, effectively dooming her to an elongated death, she decides to take matters into her own hands. She recruits a reluctant Ingrid to accompany her to a remote countryside house, where she intends to end her life via a euthanasia pill that she acquired from the dark web, and where Ingrid must be present in the room next door to hers as a means of helping her go into the afterlife peacefully.
Almodóvar’s style certainly isn’t lost in translation here, for the filmmaker brings his usual trademarks – bright popping colour schemes, lengthy monologues, an Alberto Iglesias musical score, and so on – to make it unmistakably one of his films, with the key difference being that they’re all speaking English this time around. But deep down, you can feel the filmmaker’s burning passion for melodrama, which is put to exceptional use here as he creates an emotional narrative surrounding two characters facing an extremely difficult and morally ambiguous situation. There are plenty of shed tears and played-up reactions, as one might expect in a typical melodrama, but not only are they performed by two actors that are beyond capable of pulling such moments off – both Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore are wonderful in this film, and regarding the latter I personally found The Room Next Door to be a far better homage to melodrama than their previous film May December – but Almodóvar also manages to cut right on through to the heartfelt nature of the premise, ensuring that things never go too far over the top.
The melodrama surrounding a heavy topic like euthanasia is almost guaranteed to inspire some debate amongst its many supporters and detractors, as films carrying this subject often do. Almodóvar, though, isn’t often the kind of filmmaker to court controversy, instead setting out to uncover the blossoming humanity underneath it. In this movie’s case, he sets out an understandable scenario with Swinton’s Martha, gifting her a hefty backstory to partially explain her eventual decision (shown through lengthy flashbacks featuring Esther McGregor as her younger self), and ultimately grants her the agency to choose when and how she wishes to end her life. Throughout all of that, there is a distinct sense of calm within her character, making her ironically lively just before her impending death, which initially contrasts with Moore’s Ingrid who, due to her own fear of death, cannot stand to hear her friend talk so openly about herself in the past tense. Nonetheless, Ingrid remains devoted to her friend’s literal dying wish, which in turn sees Almodóvar suggest that there is a raw case of humanity beyond the ethical debates, and that whatever side of the aisle you may stand out, it’s hard to deny the reality that these are just two people making a difficult but ultimately humane decision together.
The most heartbreaking aspect of The Room Next Door, though, is its portrayal of how swift life itself can be. The film features very little dramatic build-up to certain inevitabilities, which at first seems odd given the heavy melodrama, but once you step back to examine it, there is a striking resemblance to how, in reality, neither life nor death come with such emotional plot beats. People simply live their lives as much as they even more simply fade away, and what Almodóvar conveys rather beautifully here – via a combination of Eduard Grau’s striking cinematography and a gentle score by Iglesias – is the nature in which someone close to us, whether it’s a family member or a longtime friend, can suddenly be out of our lives forever, at the drop of a hat if fate so wishes. From that angle, the film suddenly becomes a strangely calming meditation on grief and loss, as well as the notion of never taking our loved ones for granted, for they can just slip away at a moment’s notice when we least expect it.
I’ll admit that I have not seen many of Pedro Almodóvar’s previous works, but of the ones I have seen from his filmography – basically, from 2013’s I’m So Excited! onwards – The Room Next Door is my new favourite. I would need to see his other films to determine where it ultimately stands among his work (though from what I hear from more fluent fans of his films, this isn’t quite among the top), but right now I cannot think of a better example of his emotional and exceptionally melodramatic style than this rather beautiful creation.
The Room Next Door is a beautiful meditation on life and death from filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, who successfully translates his signature style, including a burning passion for melodrama, into the English language with often heartbreaking results, thanks to two outstanding performances by Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, as well as a humanist approach to the controversial topic of euthanasia.
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