The Room Next Door by Pedro Almodovar, the film review

Much of the Spanish director’s work Pedro Almodovar has focused on the vivid and immediate aspects of life: love, sex, desire, regret. He has occasionally digressed throughout his prodigious career, but he has always returned to the vitality, passion and melodrama of human experience. Lately, however, his tone has become more crepuscular, and some of his films (such as Parallel Mothers And Pain and Glory) pause to reflect on the end of all things. In his new film, The Room Next Door (in Italy it will be released as The next room), previewed at the Venice Film Festival, Almodóvar looks the deathwith results unusual And touching.

The film is based on a novel by Sigrid Nunez, What Are You Going Throughwhich could also be about the death of Susan Sontag. Like Sontag, the character played by Tilda Swinton in Almodóvar’s adaptation, she is an awe-inspiring, accomplished writer who approaches her own demise with a kind of analytical wonder. Martha is a former war reporter who has cervical cancer, which experimental treatments have failed to eradicate. She has decided to end her life on her own terms: with a pill purchased on the dark web, in a gorgeous modernist house she rents in upstate New York.

As independent as she is, Martha doesn’t want to spend her last days alone. She reconnects with an old friend, the novelist Ingrid (Julianne Moore), and asks her to keep her company until the day Martha decides to take the pill and leave wherever we’re all headed. Sometimes it seems like Ingrid doesn’t quite believe Martha will go through with it, though her doubt probably stems from her desire to reassure herself rather than the actual nature of Martha’s belief. Ingrid accepts this dark and melancholic vacation and the two head upstate, establishing a comfortable routine while Martha takes final stock of the world and mourns how much she’s already lost.

This is Almodóvar’s first feature film in English, which gave him the opportunity to work with these two extraordinary actresses, both of whom are perfectly suited to his style (Swinton had already starred in an English-language short film directed by Almodóvar). But abandoning Spanish also presents some difficulties: the dialogues of The room next door are largely affected and overly formal. The characters speak in an “expository” manner, without the jargon and elisions of everyday conversation. Their ideas seem to come from a page rather than spring from their imaginations.

It takes a little getting used to. But once you get used to the film’s signature dialogue, The room next door creeps in and takes hold. They may speak stiffly, but what they say is profound and universal. Almodóvar lets his film steep in the enormity of Martha’s decision, examining every aspect of its implications. The thoughts that emerge from this reflection are by turns frightening, sad and full of hope. The fear of death is not conquered, but there is room for acceptance and even wonder.

There is a remarkable scene in which Martha explains bitterly that she has lost much of her zest for life. Her mind, still affected by chemotherapy, is too tired to read or listen to music. She is a person full of ideas, and yet it is as if a door in her mind has closed forever. Who is she (and who is Almodóvar perhaps) without the curiosity and longing that have always characterized her? That any of us could one day be so alien to ourselves, that our tastes, preferences and passions might not be as immutable as we thought, is a shocking concept to accept. If Almodóvar is experimenting with something like this, it doesn’t show in his recent work. That should comfort us.

We can also find consolation in a scene where Ingrid and her former boyfriend, played by John Turturrothey have lunch together and talk about the anxiety that seems to hang like a heavy, low cloud over much of life today. He is particularly concerned about the environment, and he is fatalistic about the future. He has berated his son for having a third, angered by the irresponsibility of bringing someone into the world on a dying planet. We understand the crude pragmatism of his point, but there is also something inspiring, perhaps even positive, in Ingrid’s response, that we have all the tools to live in the midst of tragedy and cataclysm. She opts for a quotidian optimism that may not solve anything, may not avert the ruin that lies in wait, but at least allows for a few fleeting moments of grace.

A moment like this can be funny, like the sequence in which Ingrid visits a local gym (it’s terribly posh for the Catskills and the staff is suspiciously hunky Spaniards) and the personal trainer nonchalantly laments that he can no longer physically touch the clients because of “lawsuits.” It’s a strange and silly interlude, hinting at a whole regrettable story we’ll never know. But, of course, Almodóvar is also lampooning what he perhaps thinks of as the rigid and apprehensive social conventions of the younger generation. In any case, this comic scene is also sad.

The film, however, does not aim to depress its audience. Instead, it is cathartic and galvanizing to witness these frightening topics being discussed and to see them transformed into delicate poetry. It is a genuine gesture of communion: Almodóvar comes to us to tell us that yes, yes, he too shares our same painful restlessness; but perhaps it is a little less sad, a little less frightening when we are reminded how common it is, and that in a sense we are all heading out together. And then, in The room next doorsomething funny happens, or there’s a beautiful, colorful image: then we get swept away by it, happy in the magnificent distraction of being alive.