Film Review: The Room Next Door

The Room Next Door
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
El Deseo
In Theaters: 01.17

There are times when experiencing art that I find it necessary to put it in a very specific context. For example, if you look at a painting by Pablo Picasso or Norman Rockwell, you can and should expect the same techniques and styles in each respective painting. However, you often have to keep in mind the artist’s very specific aesthetics. This can be the case with film as well, and I feel strongly that The Room Next Door has to be viewed very consciously as a Pedro Almodóvar film in order to not dismiss it completely.

The story centers on Ingrid (Julianne Moore, Still Alice), a successful auto-fiction novelist, who reconnects with her estranged friend Martha (Tilda Swinton), a war correspondent, after learning Martha has terminal cancer. Once colleagues at a magazine, they rekindle their bond as Martha shares her life story and reveals her decision to end her life on her terms. Martha rents a secluded house in upstate New York and asks Ingrid to be nearby when the time comes. Struggling with the request, Ingrid consults Damian (John Turturro, The Big Lebowski, Quiz Show), a former lover to both women, for guidance as the two friends confront their shared past, mortality and the complexities of love and choice.

The Room Next Door is Almodóvar’s first English language feature, though he gave us a short film, Strange Way of Life, in 2023. Almodóvar’s heightened emotional style and passionately dramatic sensibilities frequently embrace camp, and it tends to feel starker and more forced in English. We’re more open to broader strokes in international art, and there’s something about the flavor of Spanish cinema that makes it less jarring. There’s no getting around the fact there’s a strong daytime soap opera quality to the musical score, pacing and dialogue. When Damian makes a sexual overture to Ingrid, she scoffs, only to have him say “I’m serious.” Ingrid melodramatically replies “No, you’re not serious. What’s serious is Martha’s situation!” There are countless moments like this, often accompanied by orchestral swells.  At times, it’s a struggle to figure out if we’re supposed to be gripped or giggling at some of these lines (“I forgot it! The euthanasia pill! I remembered all the others!”) Only the committed performances and a familiarity with the director’s filmography confirmed that it’s not a parody. That’s not to say that there isn’t dramatic heft to the story’s themes of reconciling death as part of the experience of living and making active choices; both are quite heavy and at times, quite moving. There’s a level of artifice to it at all times, however, I  feel the film goes too far in romanticizing a highly complex subject matter.

Swinton and Moore play it straight, delivering even the silliest lines with a conviction and honesty that makes it succeed as a drama despite the soapy trappings. This realistic approach to the performances juxtaposed with the campy atmosphere is pure Almodóvar. Swinton is one of the most unique presences in the medium. Even her most over-the-top performances have an indelible sense of reality to them. She’s marvelous as the pained and weary Martha, though without spoiling anything outright, Almodóvar pulls a last-minute surprise with the actress in the third act that is an interesting idea, but it feels like a gimmick or experiment that ultimately detracts from the emotion of the sequence. Moore has a harder time pulling off the demands of the stiff and goofy lines that she’s asked to spout, yet her commanding presence holds the film together. Turturro—a fantastic actor who is quite capable of scenery chewing when he wants to—keeps with reasonable boundaries, though his character feels present largely to help pad the film out to feature length by giving Moore someone else to play off of. The long sequences of him pontificating on subjects ranging from sex to climate change are both pretentious and tedious. Alessandro Nivola (The Many Saints of Newark, Face/Off) smolders in a one-scene role as a police officer.

The Room Next Door is certainly going to be an essential viewing for Almodóvar aficionados, and it’s a dramatically ambitious film. It was simply both too cheesy and too clear cut in its arguments for me, and the portrayal of both women so casually popping illegally obtained pills online really didn’t sit well with me as someone who has seen the tragic effects of such reckless behavior in real life. The Room Next Door is an effective melodrama that will please fans, but I was hoping for so much more. —Patrick Gibbs

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