“You’re one of the only people who knows how to suffer without making others feel guilty about it.”
Earlier this summer, I got to revisit All About My Mother, director Pedro Amoldovar’s 1999 Oscar-winning masterpiece, with my other half and a friend of ours who had recently lost her father. It was an emotional outing made even more so by the brilliance and beauty of Amoldovar’s film which held up in every regard, especially in the deep human emotion that poured out of its characters. It proved a cathartic experience for our friend and reinforced how mesmerizing a filmmaker Amoldovar could be in 1999. Twenty-five years later the filmmaker is still Spain’s most compelling voice when it comes to film. His latest, the drama The Room Next Door, marks his English-language debut and was given quite the launch when Amoldovar took home the top prize for it at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Despite a lack of buzz surrounding the film in the wake of its win, The Room Next Door has emerged as both one of the year’s best titles as well as a bona fide Amoldovar classic.
In The Room Next Door, successful New York author Ingrid (Julianne Moore) reconnects with old friend Martha (Tilda Swinton), a former journalist now battling cancer. As their friendship becomes renewed, Ingrid’s condition worsens, leading her to decide to take her own life. Not wanting to be alone when the time comes, she convinces Ingrid to be with her for her final days. Martha gives very little details about when she plans to die but tells Ingrid that when the time has come, her bedroom door will be closed.
As previously mentioned, The Room Next Door has already gotten its fair share of attention for being its legendary director’s English-language debut. Given this fact, it would only be natural to wonder how the director’s style and sensibilities as a storyteller would transfer when finding himself away from home. The result is a film that feels freshly familiar with many of the classic Amoldovar touches finding a place within the new landscape. The chemistry between his leading ladies and the characters they play feels like they wouldn’t belong anywhere else but in a world crafted by the director himself. Watching the way Martha and Ingrid interact and relate to each other feels totally Amoldovar, showing him to once again be a director fascinated and beguiled by the intricacies of women. Like other Amoldovar films, The Room Next Door plunges its audience straight into a human drama that inch by inch becomes more captivating in ways you wouldn’t expect. The film’s bright color palate, music, staging, set design, and overall story flow are also characteristically Amoldovar and serve as proof that his filmmaker instincts cannot help but come to the surface, no matter what country he finds himself in.
Like several past Amoldovar films, The Room Next Door is primarily concerned with the bond between its characters. The movie’s comment on friendship is really what drives the film rather than the act Martha is intent on committing. Both characters start somewhat reserved in their first scene together after not having been in each other’s lives for some time. The tone quickly changes, however, and the two are soon seen slipping into a familiarity, showing how that natural shorthand two people can share never truly leaves. When Martha asks Ingrid to accompany her for her final days, new elements are inserted into their friendship. There’s the presence of regrets, which one character is plagued by and the other tries to dodge, not to mention the topic of death. It’s this subject that proves the only potential divider between the two women with Martha embracing it as a tool and Ingrid fearful of its presence as it lurks around her. As is his custom, Amoldovar poses some genuinely thought-provoking questions through his narrative. This time around the questions are heavier than normal, not to mention incredibly personal: How close are you to someone that you could ask them to be there for you were you to take your own life? How close are you to that person that you could tell them yes? Wisely, Amoldovar depends on his audience to answer these questions themselves.
Few better actresses could have been called upon to help usher in Amoldovar’s English feature debut. Moore and Swinton are so right for their roles and have each employed their trademark acting styles to bring to life two women at opposite ends of the spectrum who are inexorably linked in the middle. Watching the pair is half the joy of a film like The Room Next Door. Both give performances full of curiosity, wonder, melancholy, and poignancy while remaining in respectful awe of one another as they bring their characters’ bond to beautiful life. It’s sadly still such a rarity that we should get a film from a high-profile director featuring two such indelible actresses of the same generation. The Room Next Door is a sterling example of just what a gift such a pairing can be.
There’s very little fault to find with The Room Next Door. Apart from an exhausting mini-rant by John Turturro (playing a former lover of both characters) that temporarily brings this film about death down, Amoldovar’s latest is near perfect and almost playful. The filmmaker has some fun with the audience by having his characters take a break from the situation in front of them to engage with several cultural references. There’s a discussion between Martha and Ingrid about surrealist author Leonora Carrington, a pensive moment showing the two discovering an Edward Hopper painting (which they proceed to recreate), and a movie night that lasts into the next morning with the two opting to watch the likes of John Huston’s The Dead and Max Ophuls’ Letter From an Unknown Woman. For Amoldovar, these touches are a treat and a lesson on how he so eloquently straddles the line between the literary and grounded as he remains a true maestro whose fluency in cinema is as strong as ever.
