EntertainmentMoviesDrama MoviesJulianne Moore and Tilda Swinton’s new movie asks all the big questions about taking death into your own handsWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
EntertainmentMoviesDrama MoviesJulianne Moore and Tilda Swinton’s new movie asks all the big questions about taking death into your own handsWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Warner Bros.)
The Room Next Door is the first English-language feature film from Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, who’s best known for his collaborations with Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas on movies like Volver and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Like the last film Almodóvar made with Banderas, 2019’s Pain and Glory, The Room Next Door also questions how we deal with aging bodies in decline, but the latter takes the theme further.
A matter of love and death
(Image credit: Warner Bros. Pictures)
Big Screen SpotlightShining a light on the under-the-radar theatrical releases that you need to know about, with a new article every Friday
Big Screen Spotlight
Shining a light on the under-the-radar theatrical releases that you need to know about, with a new article every Friday
Shining a light on the under-the-radar theatrical releases that you need to know about, with a new article every Friday
If Parallel Mothers, Almodóvar’s last film that followed (among other things) a woman’s quest to excavate a mass grave from the Spanish Civil War in her hometown, was about memory, The Room Next Door is about legacy. What do we leave behind of ourselves? What do we leave behind for others – our loved ones, and the world at large? Via John Turturro’s character, Ingrid and Martha’s shared ex-boyfriend Damien, the film voices anxieties about neoliberalism, the far right, and the climate crisis, and the film culminates with a haunting shot of two characters lying on sun loungers as unseasonable snow begins to fall.
Big Screen Spotlight(Image credit: StudioCanal)Sebastian Stan’s controversial Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice was never intended to be political, according to the film’s team
Big Screen Spotlight
(Image credit: StudioCanal)Sebastian Stan’s controversial Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice was never intended to be political, according to the film’s team
(Image credit: StudioCanal)
Sebastian Stan’s controversial Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice was never intended to be political, according to the film’s team
The linguistic shift from Spanish to English doesn’t change Almodóvar’s trademark stylistic dialogue and melodramatic flair, either. “I didn’t want the story to be necessarily a sad story or a boring story, I wanted death to also be vibrant and alive,” the director said in an interview withIndieWire. “It is part of Tilda’s character’s vitality that she decides to take death into her own hands.”
Swinton and Moore anchor the movie’s big, difficult questions with human, nuanced performances, keeping grand philosophical issues grounded in a very real portrayal of friendship and grief. During one of the film’s earlier scenes, Martha tells Ingrid about an aid worker she met during a journalistic assignment in Baghdad who stayed put through the city’s evacuation in order to stay with his lover, stating that he used sex as a shield against war. In a similar way, Martha uses Ingrid’s friendship as a shield against her sickness and her impending death – until the shield becomes more of a cushion. Ultimately, Ingrid’s presence becomes something softer and less avoidant as the film progresses: she’s not blocking Martha from her reality, but just making things a little easier.
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The Room Next Door is out now in UK cinemas and arrives in US theaters on December 20. For more on what to watch, check out the rest of ourBig Screen Spotlightseries.
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