Almodóvar's first English-language feature film is a powerful portrait of life, death and the unbreakable bonds that help us to navigate it all. At the same time, there's a sense some emotional authenticity got lost in translation.
ADVERTISEMENTBeloved for his pop-coloured production design, playful melodrama and fearlessness for tackling taboos, Pedro Almodóvar’s films have always felt like wayward worlds within a world, so full of life yet off-kilter through abrasive dialogue and a flamboyant whimsy.
His latest, The Room Next Door, marks a fascinating departure from this, tackling the subject of assisted death with a bold sensitivity; Almodóvar’s traditional tone and look are still there - but softened with profundity.
Such a shift makes sense - it’s the Spanish director’s first English-language feature, following the shorts Strange Way of Life (2023) and The Human Voice (2020). This was, he has previously stated, a way to “start a new era” in filmmaking - but the right project for such a challenge didn’t find him until the middle pages of Sigrid Nunez's novel, ‘What Are You Going Through’, where the focus is on conversations between a woman and her dying friend.
We first meet Ingrid (Julianne Moore), an autofiction writer who is terrified of death - and even working on a book to confront this (not that it’s helping). She then discovers that her old friend, Martha (Tilda Swinton) is dying from terminal cancer, leading the pair to reconnect, Martha eventually asking Ingrid if she will stay with her in a rented house, where she plans to take a euthanasia pill: "I'm ready to go," she says. "I'd even say I'm impatient."
Similar to a theatre play, where time and space shrinks to one location, Almodóvar’s film is at its strongest cradling Ingrid and Martha’s bond, their relationship and perceptions of life unfurling and evolving inside the walls of homes embellished in vivid greens, reds and banana-themed fruit bowls.
As Julianne Moore said in a press conference following the film’s premiere at Venice Film Festival: “We very rarely see a film about female friendships, and especially female friendships that are older.”
The topic of taking autonomy over our own life and death is most crucial. While it’s been explored in films before, including 2007’s Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) and 2022’s Plan 75, it’s still very much taboo - not only euthanasia (which is currently only legal in four European countries), but discussions on mortality in general - the western world is especially bad at confronting death.
The Room Next Door succeeds through bringing these issues to light in a mostly impactful and affecting way, particularly once it reaches its second act. But the dialogue also hinders this at points, delivered in a very bare, literal way - take, for example, a conversation between Martha and her ex-boyfriend, in which she tells him she’s pregnant. His response? “I was planning on moving to San Francisco next week”.
Or when Ingrid starts discussing the fact she's going to find a gym mid-way through a conversation about death, as though we're in a world where every thought about a potential action that pops into your head must be said out loud.
This is not necessarily unusual in style for Almodóvar, for whom blunt, melodramatic speech is a hallmark. The fact it's his first English-language translation also needs to be taken into account. Still, it can feel jarring in a screenplay dealing with such delicate subject matters, losing a sense of emotional authenticity.
The strength of the two lead performances and knotty subject matter - dealt without restraint - will hopefully render the above point a non-issue for many. Besides, the film's core message remains clear: we should all have autonomy over our own existence.
While most of us won't be afforded the luxury of choosing to die in an opulent glass house, wearing red lipstick on Hockney-coloured sun loungers, we should still have the fundamental choice of determining our own life and death - especially in circumstances where we're deprived of any quality of existence.
As Martha laments, "there are lots of ways to live life inside a tragedy" - thankfully, The Room Next Door isn't one.
