Spanish powerhouse filmmaker Pedro Almodovar whose career spans five decades bagged his first top festival prize at this year's Venice Film Festival with The Room Next Door. It isn’t quite the film you’d expect to win such a prestigious prize based on artistic merit, nor is it one of Almodovar’s best works. However, some would argue that the time to reward Almodovar with such a prize is long overdue. Thankfully, there’s still plenty to admire and indulge in from this piece.
Ingrid (Julianne Moore) discovers her old friend Martha (Tilda Swinton) has stage three ovarian cancer. Ingrid visits Martha in the hospital where they reminisce on the past and talk about cancer diagnosis in a refreshing perspective that feels both intelligent and philosophical. Following the deep conversations and the reigniting of the bond from their past, Martha asks Ingrid to go away with her to an out-of-town rental where she’ll end her life early from a pill she acquired from the dark web.
Almodovar rewards us with a deeply philosophical approach to an assisted dying tale. This is driven by the depthful conversations between the two female leads which present dying as somewhat beautiful and charming. These discussions deliver lines of dialogue that make you stand up straight and command your attention. Such standout lines include “I felt death in my hand. I never thought it would be so light” and “It was like having sex with a terrorist, you weren't sure if it was going to be the last time” and “You are one of the only people who know how to suffer without making others feel guilty about it”.
Although the spoken word is the star of this show, there were moments when Almodovar could have relied on visuals as another method to tell this story but he refrains. Some dialogue may feel unnecessary at times, but you’re willing to dismiss this aspect as what the characters are talking about is interesting, something that feels rare to come across these days.
The Room Next Door presents itself as an extremely contemporary film as Almodovar throws current talking points into the set of deep conversations. There’s a scene where Ingrid has a session with a personal trainer who wishes to console her but explains that he can’t hug clients due to potential lawsuits, to which Ingrid replies “The world is absurd and inhumane. I don’t see it improving anytime soon”. In another scene, Ingrid and Martha’s ex-lover Damian (John Turturro), expresses his frustrations about neoliberalism, the rise of the far-right and climate change. While the latter scene feels a touch inauthentic to what’s going on with the characters, it's clear that Almodovar wants to timestamp his latest work rather than leave behind one that is timeless.
While The Room Next Door is intellectually stimulating, there is this underlying feeling that we’re expecting this meditative experience to turn into something more Hitchcockian from the playfulness Martha presents and our prior experience with Almodovar films. But this turn of events never arrives. This is where there would have been room to enhance the work into something much more interesting than it’s already giving us. It does feel like a missed opportunity, especially when you’re left feeling an appetite for more by the film's ending. The Room Next Door is just simply an admirably crafted meditation on assisted dying, executed in the best fashion by Moore and Swinton. Just don’t mistake it for the filmmaker's grand masterpiece.
Out in UK cinemas from today