The Room Next Door
Spain/U.S.A. 2024

Opening 24 Oct 2024

Directed by: Pedro Almodóvar
Writing credits: Pedro Almodóvar, Sigrid Nunez
Principal actors: Julianne Moore, John Turturro, Tilda Swinton, Alex Høgh Andersen, Alessandro Nivola

The rekindling of a friendship is a splendid thing; the rekindling of a friendship shadowed by a looming suicide is quite another. Two of the world's most brilliant actors, Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, join together to portray two former friends who had been magazine journalists together in New York City in the ‘80s, but have not been in touch for years. Martha (Swinton), a legendary, swashbuckling war correspondent, has now been diagnosed with inoperable cervical cancer and is lying in a very swanky New York City hospital bed. Ingrid (Moore) has staked her claim as a successful author, whose overriding theme of late has been her fear of death. Ingrid hears from a mutual friend at a book signing that Martha is very ill, so she decides to visit her in her impossibly chic hospital room with a view of the Manhattan skyline including an ethereal shower of pink snow.

The two become close as Martha explains she has enrolled in an experimental clinical trial and is full of hope she will recover. What she fears will never be healed is her broken relationship with her estranged daughter Michelle, who, due to her demanding job, she has never really “mothered.” As a not totally unexpected twist, Martha’s treatment is unsuccessful and she transitions immediately to an alternative plan, suicide with the aid of an illegal euthanasia pill secured from the dark web. Martha convinces a reluctant Ingrid to accompany her on her final journey to an ultra-modern, luxurious rental house, straight out of Architectural Digest, near Woodstock, to spend her final month on Earth. She doesn’t want to be alone when she takes the pill, she wants Ingrid in the room next door.

This is Pedro Almodóvar’s first English language film, his twenty-third feature film. It is quite incredible that now, at the age of seventy-five, he has made such a thought-provoking masterpiece as director and writer, in English, based on the novel What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez. Almodóvar fans will delight in his familiar artistic, visual touches, his playful use of bold colors, greens, reds, yellows and blues, that randomly pop up even in Martha’s Manhattan hospital attire. The rented house (actually located near Madrid) is a work of art in itself; it is a series of interconnected angular glass and steel spaces, sitting in an enchanting forest. One unforgettable image lingers—Martha and Ingrid sitting peacefully in pistachio-colored chaise lounges beneath a reproduction of Edward Hopper’s People in the Sun. Their world captured at that moment in time is radiating harmony and serenity.

That seems to be the underlying message in the film. The Room Next Door is not a depressing commentary on human mortality or the morality of euthanasia. It is a story about friendship, friendship in its final phases of aging and dying. Swinton and Moore perfectly portray the comfort that friendship can bring in the most lonely and isolating time of life. (Pat Frickey)