Almodóvar returns with a twilight film starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore

After a few unsuccessful attempts in Hollywood, Almodóvar chose to set his film on the East Coast, in New York State, the city that opened the doors to the United States for him when he started out in the 1980s.

Can you start an American career at 74? Spanish cinema icon Pedro Almodóvar has delivered his first English-language feature film in Venice, a twilight tale of assisted suicide starring American stars Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore.

The Room Next Door, in the running for the Golden Lion, follows Ingrid, a novelist anxious about the end of life (Julianne Moore), and Martha (Tilda Swinton), her childhood friend, a former war reporter accustomed to defying death, who lives alone in her beautiful New York apartment. In a few flashbacks, the film rewinds Martha’s life: her daughter whom she never raised because of her job and to whom she never spoke about her biological father, her companions to whom she never became attached. A strong, free, but lonely woman.

When the two friends meet again, Martha is terminally ill with cancer. Refusing the prospect of a new treatment that is as uncertain as it is trying, she decides to end her life by taking a drug bought illegally on the Internet. She asks Ingrid to accompany her in her final moments, by moving in with her in a sumptuous rental house in the countryside, in “the room next door”.

The friend will never be far away but will not have to administer the pill, which Martha intends to take alone, one night, behind her closed door. She promises her that no one will ever know anything about their arrangement. But Ingrid will take into her confidence a man, played by John Turturro, who was their companion to both of them.

Devilishly Almodovarian on paper, the film is nevertheless far from the sound and fury of the kitsch and provocative comedies of the early days of the enfant terrible of Spanish cinema, but also from the emotional heights of All About My Mother Or Talk to her. It also moves away from his more recent autobiographical vein. (Pain and Glory) to go frankly towards melodrama, without revolutionizing the way of filming a subject, euthanasia, regularly treated in cinema. He attempts a few political-social escapes, drawing a parallel between the end of life and the climate catastrophe.

Almodóvar, whose works are increasingly tormented by physical decline and the fear of death, returned to the subject at a press conference: “The film is about a woman who is dying in a world that is probably also dying.”

“I was born in the region of La Mancha, where there is a deep culture around death (…) I feel very close to the character of Julianne (Moore), I can’t accept that something that is alive has to die. Death is everywhere but it’s something I’ve never understood. I’m 74 years old. Every day that I pass is one day less that I have left”

Pedro Almodóvar, filmmaker

Press conference

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Filming in the United States, in English, was a project that had been in the works for a very long time by the Spaniard, the undisputed master in his country, author ofTie me up! Or The Law of Desire and a great voice of European cinema. After a few unsuccessful attempts in Hollywood, Almodóvar chose to set his film on the East Coast, in New York State, the city that opened the doors of the United States to him when he started out in the 1980s. Almodóvar released his first medium-length film in English in 2020, The human voice, from Jean Cocteau, also with Tilda Swinton. Three years later, he did it again in an even shorter format with Strange Way of Lifea gay western starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal.

For The Room Next Doorhe once again relied on composer Alberto Iglesias for the soundtrack and on collaboration with major brands for the actresses’ wardrobe. “Each character has to be dressed in a certain way. In this way, a lot of emotions are told,” explained the filmmaker in June.