Snow, fluffy, soft and pink, falls on New York, probably on account of the global climate changes, or because Martha (Tilda Swinton), once a renowned war correspondent in leading publications, will not be cured from cancer; the experimental treatment is not working and she is sure to die. And it might be because Pedro Almodóvar, auteur of The Room Next Door, is a director hailing from Spain, a country where snow does not fall. Once he finally took the plunge to make his first film in the English language, he did so in a country and a city where one cannot but admire snow. This one is particular is beautiful, as Martha puts it, since you understand you are seeing it for the last time.
Every filmmaker tries, either consciously or not, to make a film about two main subjects: love and death. Almodóvar always filmed about love; sometimes it seems that he exhausted that subject somewhere around Talk to Her. When it comes to death he always proceeded first with playfulness, in generic codes, for instance in Matador. He got serious in All About my Mother and even more serious with Pain and Glory. The Room Next Door is a feature where there is nothing but the fear of inevitable death and its miraculous overcoming, not so much through stoicism or humor (an aspect almost nowhere to be found, which is atypical for the director), but through compassion and empathy. The sour elegy of death becomes a quiet ode to friendship.
The film is based on the novel What Are You Going Through, by American author Sigrid Nunez. It possesses a beautiful, ironic and sober prose, but it features more internal movement than external events. In fact, Almodóvar had to build the protagonist’s background: the nameless narrator became Ingrid, a renowned writer, while Martha is her dying colleague and friend. He added new dialogues, added material and rewrote the ending.
In this way, Martha decides to renounce to the final sessions of the therapy and buys a “euthanasia tablet” on the dark web. Now she -–just like the protagonist in Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry— needs to find an assistant for her death. Her relationship with her daughter is distant and her close friends decline horrified. Therefore, she turns to Ingrid, with whom she distanced herself a long time ago. She has nothing to do; she simply is in the room next door. Ingrid hesitates, since she is panicked about death; she even wrote a book about the subject. Despite everything, she accepts. Together they go to a rented house in the middle of the forest near Woodstock; an idyllic place. There is where they will take the final steps, the most important ones in this path.
Anticipating how heavy and sickening the subject matter can be, Almodóvar (who seems to share Ingrid’s phobia) timidly sets himself apart from the usual outline, mixing the screen space with beautiful allusions and cultural parallels (Edward Hopper’s “People in the Sun”; the short story “The Dead” by James Joyce; John Huston, Dora Carrington and even Buster Keaton) and the non-ingenious main action, with confusing comebacks and flashbacks that do not contribute much: Martha’s memories in Irak and Bosnia, the story of her daughter’s birth and the death of her father.
The heroines change, if not the place but their roles, while they live at the house-limbo. Condemned to the humiliating role of being object of someone else’s concern, Martha retakes the initiative of her own death and returns to her own subjectivity. Ingrid, who carries the narrative drive, turns out to be the companion of the dying friend. A visual quote from Ingmar Bergman’s Persona comes up: we see only half of the laid down protagonists, as if they were one person, but inevitably divided.
The film, just like any other by Almodóvar, is submitted to women. However, two male appearances, not only significant from the subject’s point of view, stand out among the scarce and even cold narrative (Isn’t the snow there for a reason?). John Turturro portrays the intellectual lecturer who condemns the world at its fullest and preaches on about the impending apocalypse. He was a lover to both Martha and Ingrid. The filmmaker’s usual resources are turned upside down: women go through cruel experiences; men comfort their pain.
Stylistically, The Room Next Door is a sober film, serene even, almost minimalistic, except for the known, momentary and alarming score by Alberto Iglesias. Prior Almodóvar titles offered an inclination towards bright colors, at moments scandalous, but always appropriate. Here the most expressive image is the red door, usually left ajar. On the day Martha decides to take the lethal pill, the door closes.
It is not usual to acknowledge this, but for the first time Almodóvar has shot a film where the mastery of the directing clearly does not stand out as much as the talents of his cast. It is, without a doubt, an actors’ movie, in the noblest sense of the word. Never has Swinton performed with such dedication, defenselessness and frankness. Moore presents a next level delight, since her character has to talk and act very little; usually she listens, but does so with such intensity and attention that becomes and ideal go-between for the audience.
Precisely, it is Moore’s presence what makes The Room Next Door a film not about death, but also about the nature of friendship, about the selfless relationship between people that offers a transparent hope, even in a dead-end situation. And taking hope away from people, as Ingrid explains to her distressed former lover, is something one cannot do.
Despite the subject, the film is not at all a drama that seeks to nourish the soul. Quite the contrary, emotions are hereby overshadowed. Almodóvar is interested in the right of everyone to a dignified death, one that the world’s very condition tries to deprive Martha of.
The ideal core for The Room Next Door is the political and ethical matters around euthanasia. Having lost the possibility to have a family of her own because of her work, Martha is astounded that the lost fight of the human being with death is presented today like a battle. Is not usual to admit defeat; society expects you to fight bravely to the bitter end. What if you do not want to fight, if you have the right to a dignified and merciful death? At least neither Ingrid Nunez nor Pedro Almodóvar deny it to Martha.
Director, Screenwriter: Pedro Almodóvar. Cast: Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore, John Turturro, Alessandro Nivola, Juan Diego Botto. Producer: Agustín Almodóvar. Runtime: 110 minutes.
