In movies, characters die every day. Whether you’re watching a violent thriller, a poignant film like Steel Magnolias, or some of Ingmar Bergman’s more terrifying meditations, you might say that movies, in their collective, wonderful way, are nothing less than a rehearsal for death. Yet it’s rare to find a great cinematic drama that takes death by the horns, looks it squarely in the face, and demands that we confront its terrifying reality on every level as Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door does.
The film is simple in form. It’s about two women, both in their early 60s, who have been friends for a long time but haven’t seen each other in years: Ingrid (Julianne Moore), an art-world author living in New York City, and Martha (Tilda Swinton), a former New York Times war correspondent who travels the world. Ingrid reconnects with Martha when she learns that Martha is in the hospital battling cancer. Her illness is serious: Stage 3 cervical cancer, and she’s on a highly experimental immunotherapy treatment that’s her only chance. (In other words, there’s not much of a cure.)
Some people in this situation might not choose to vent, but Martha isn’t. She knows she might die, and she’s frank, open, and philosophical about it. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. We can see that Martha and Ingrid were once close—and after a few encounters, they still are. The film, despite a few other characters (like the man they date, a climate change pessimist played by John Turturro), is essentially a duet, a series of conversations between the two women that could almost be taking place on stage.
By adapting Sigrid Núñez’s 2020 American novel, What You’re Going Through, into his first English-language feature, Almodóvar has crafted a dialogue-heavy film with an expository maturity. The Room Next Door is by no means Almodóvar’s TV series, but it reveals his love of connection, incident, and sparkling emotion. The characters explain who they are, putting themselves out there. Early on, Martha tells the story of how she ended up estranged from her daughter, Michelle, whom she raised as a young single mother, and this poignant flashback (set in the Vietnam era) feels like a mini-movie in itself.
“The Room Next Door” is vividly shot (directed by Edward Grau), especially when the characters move into a luxury vacation home in the countryside outside Woodstock, New York. But mostly, the film is about Martha and Ingrid talking about death, and Martha finally figuring out what to do about it. She hasn’t stopped wanting to live. She’s just tired of fighting the fear of death.
Tilda Swinton’s face has always been so distinctive—pale and stern, almost translucently expressive, with the aura she conjures up as David Bowie’s eccentric, aristocratic sister—that we feel as if we know it as we do. In The Room Next Door, Swinton’s face, along with her words, becomes a fascinating tool of inquiry. She gives a tremendous performance, one that deserves comparison with Vanessa Redgrave’s spirit and contemplative skills. She makes Martha a real-life woman who knows herself and knows what she wants, but who has landed in uncharted territory. She’s not ready for this. Who is? But she’ll take the journey, and she’ll take us with her.
At a certain point, Martha decides she’s had enough, and she’s going to take control of her own destiny. She’ll decide when to die. The Room Next Door is not a “problem” movie (though it leans heavily on euthanasia). It’s a straightforward but skillful journey through the emotional river that accompanies the urge to end one’s life. Martha has a plan, and it’s a relatively simple one, though it involves a pill she has to obtain, with some difficulty, from the dark web. And the challenge doesn’t end there. When she and Ingrid move into the house upstate, a timeline emerges, infusing the film with a reality-based suspense. Will Ingrid wake up to find Martha’s bedroom door locked? That’s their agreed-upon code for Martha’s day of reckoning. Warm and compassionate, Ingrid Moore will do whatever it takes to support her friend, which makes her part of the spiritual and moral equation. She’s there to protect Martha, even though she needs protection (from the law).
Pedro Almodóvar, 74, is not a fatalistic Spanish director, but his films are increasingly haunted by death. That’s why the comedies are mostly burned out. I would argue, though, that doesn’t make him a pessimist. The Room Next Door, animated by Swinton’s burningly human performance, is uplifting and cathartic. The film is all about death, but in the unflinching honesty with which it confronts the subject, it stands firmly on the side of life.
