‘The Room Next Door’ is Almodóvar less Almodóvar than ever

You must carefully choose who to have in The Room Next Door. A friend, a confidant, a family member. Martha wants Ingrid, an old acquaintance she hasn’t seen in a long time, who visits her as she faces her illness in the hospital. A cancer that may not be curable, so it’s better to end things without losing one’s dignity. The theme, based on the book What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez, has the necessary pathos to be shaped by the art and melodramatic aesthetics of Pedro Almodóvar, who indeed wins the Golden Lion with his first English-language film. And here comes a realization: the work, which calls on the relationship between Tilda Swinton (with whom Almodóvar previously worked on the medium-length film The Human Voice) and Julianne Moore (red as red has always been his cinema), is not the director and screenwriter’s most deserving piece, but it is the auteur recognition he had never achieved until now. Although he had already received a lifetime achievement award at the Venice Film Festival in 2019, the jury, chaired by Isabelle Huppert, decided that in a year of experimentation and contemporaneity, where models were broken, as with Queer by Luca Guadagnino and Babygirl by Halina Reijn, it was necessary to make classicism triumph. Going against the trend even with the 2024 Palme d'Or, the unexpected and beloved Anora, where indie disguised itself as both great cinema for the public and auteur work, while being carefully preserved by the mastery of Sean Baker. Another notable fact is how the recognition came for an Anglophone work, after years of Spanish-language cinema, for a language that inherently carries so much tradition. While some may see Almodóvar’s essence diluted with The Room Next Door, it is precisely there, invisible, enclosed like a secret to keep or a medicine to hide, which seeks to die with, where his touch can be rediscovered.

With a languid and emphatic tone, the film talks about life and death, past and present, the women protagonists, what they’ve lived through, and how they’ve come to be there, side by side. The adaptation of the novel is composed and formal, appearance taking precedence over content, where everything is artificial but does not even try to hide its intent to be so. It is self-aware, like the melodrama genre, like an entire career Almodóvar has devoted himself to. And perhaps in this experiment with language and a different, almost more rigorous, deliberately refined context—at times very elegant—it is strange yet intriguing to find him. Feeling that the fire that has always burned beneath his films could suddenly extinguish—after all, it speaks of death—but it can be found in passionate smudges, in unintentional yet fitting kitsch, as in the flashbacks so unexpected and inadequate, sometimes excessive and heartfelt, where, however, the author can be glimpsed. And then, his pillars. His actresses. Counted among directors who love and make their protagonists beloved, often bringing them to nominations and awards, as in 2021 with Penélope Cruz winning the Volpi Cup for Parallel Mothers, also at Venice, Almodóvar gives the stage to Swinton and Moore. He makes them friends, without forcing their relationship, despite framing it within a dominant scenography of art and architecture, of reds, yellows, and greens. They too are fictitious, but they are such talented performers that they humanize the theatricality and verbosity of the work, becoming not only icons of Pedro Almodóvar’s cinema but also women who have loved, lost love, immersed themselves entirely in life, and faced its most insidious aspects, leading to that moment, now, the idea of euthanasia.

As the central theme of The Room Next Door, the decision to end one’s life by one’s own hand is the undercurrent of a story encompassing Martha’s will and Ingrid’s role in supporting her while accepting that the only thing left to do is to be a good friend. Never shouted though sorrowful, in line with the rigor of the entire film, the desire for death is neither agonized nor agonizing; it is simply the wish to celebrate what one’s life has been, not to see it crumble. And, like all good films about death, The Room Next Door must inevitably be filled with life, as well as meaning. In relationships with people, in the memory of what one has been and how one wishes to be remembered. Perhaps in one’s offspring. And this is how we will remember the film: bourgeois and weary, afflicted and warm. An Almodóvar less Almodóvar than ever, yet still appreciated. It is the work of a director who remains himself even when he seems like something else entirely.