Review of ‘The Room Next Door’: Almodóvar’s English slip

Director: Pedro Almodovar | Script: Pedro Almodovar | Cast: Julianne Moore (Ingrid), Tilda Swinton (Martha, Michelle), John Turturro (Damian), Alessandro Nivola (Police), Alex Høgh Andersen (Fred), each | Playing time: 110 minutes | Year: 2024

After reaching the top of the queer field in 2013 with The Passenger Lovers Pedro Almodóvar’s work has become more serious in the last decade: bigger themes, more mature narratives. But it turns out that blood runs where it cannot go. The next room. The fact that Almodóvar regularly resorts to his usual directorial choices for this drama about euthanasia rarely benefits the subject.

The next room is Almodóvar’s first full-length feature film in English (the half-hour films in English The human voice in strange way of life ignored for the moment). Very late for a filmmaker who has been active for about fifty years and has nothing to complain about in terms of international prestige. The next room It seems this may have to do with the language barrier. Because although the Spanish filmmaker can make himself understood in English in interviews, his main characters hardly manage to maintain a conversation that sounds credible in the initial phase.

That shouldn’t be the actors’ fault. Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton have proven themselves time and time again over the years, in both Oscar-winning dramas and crowd-pleasing blockbusters, but when their characters, Ingrid and Martha, reunite after years Because the latter is terminally ill, it sounds as if they both have a nominated rehearsed text. A linguistically correct text – Almodóvar undoubtedly had his writing revised – but it barely contains humanity. And that possibly goes back to the direction of the actors. After all, a director must indicate how the texts should be presented.

Unfortunately, Moore and Swinton also have to make do with rather detailed texts. His numerous dialogues are not so much spoken as proclaimed. I would prefer to wait for the things that are said offstage. The discomfort of impending death and years without contact should cause some discomfort, but instead of searching for the right words, both ladies always have a nice line prepared. And for the rest, there is still a bit of James Joyce to quote.

Perhaps this could be attributed to the professional background of these women: Ingrid writes novels, Martha was a war reporter for years. But writers do not always have good pronunciation; finding a well-formed sentence is precisely their job. There’s also little subtlety in how those letters allow scenes to play out. The viewer is never challenged to use dialogue to piece together exactly what kind of (set) past these women have; This is always explained directly, without interest or detours.

How working as a war reporter shaped the dying Martha’s life is explored a little, but not enough. Unfortunately for Almodóvar Civil war in Leeward At the beginning of this year he had already cut the necessary grass under his feet, but a personal drama reminiscent of an unusual life should delve much deeper into this area. You’re left with an obligatory flashback to the Iraq War, which doesn’t seem particularly believable, in which Martha mainly points out that it’s “very dangerous.”

The visuals are also quite clunky; Almost everything is filmed in close-up (medium). Even when Moore and Swinton appear on screen at the same time, they do so unnecessarily close and usually face-to-face. It feels stagey, like the actresses are acting towards the fourth wall. These directorial choices work well in many of Almodóvar’s films that don’t expect you to take them one hundred percent seriously, but here they come across as rather clumsy.

The uninspired editing doesn’t help. In a simple two-way conversation we always see the person speaking. As soon as someone comes into view, you know they’re going to say something in a second. Even in a rare moment in humanity, when one of the two women cannot open a refrigerator, there is an immediate cut to the other asking, “Can I help?” This moment would be much stronger if we saw this character making an irremediable mistake for a few seconds, while the source of the annoying help remained off-screen.

In a way it is nice that Almodóvar does not allow the theme of an ending chosen by himself to be accompanied by enormous melancholy. For those who need it, there is a new arthouse film almost every month. But there should still be a good balance between the entertaining and the serious, between the tragedy of death and the celebration of life. This requires a degree of tact that Almodóvar seems unable to find: frivolous music is played during many (dialogue) scenes, while impending death merits some silence.

The movie suddenly picks up a lot halfway through the movie, when the two friends move into a vacation home together, where Martha will breathe her last. A proven fact (Last round I also did something similar earlier this year and it wasn’t exactly the first), but in this part the scenes immediately flow much better: more spontaneous dialogue, more creative shots, less rigid acting. There’s even a degree of tension: is Martha’s bedroom door open or closed? Because that makes the difference between life and death.

There even seems to be some venom creeping into the story at this late stage. Martha’s death will occur thanks to an illegally obtained euthanasia pill. This makes Ingrid an accessory to his death, which may give a legal end to his act of humanity. But as she pointed out before: they’re not that good of friends. Is Martha’s chosen end worth the risk of a prison sentence for Ingrid?

with that know The next room at the last moment to explore some interesting aspects in scenes that are sometimes quite effective. But ultimately this final phase ends before he can save the film, leaving the idea that Almodóvar wasted a lot of valuable time in the first half. Maybe this movie should have started with the beginning of the end?