The Room Next Door review: Almodóvar turns Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore into agents of happiness

Cast: Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, John Turturro

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Rating: 4 stars

The Room Next Door review: When we meet our Maker—or whatever alternative theory you believe in—how many of us can look at death straight in the eye, and bark, “Try me!” Honest to God’s truth, not a whole lot. Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door is a hilarious take, albeit dark, on the seriousness of death and man’s perpetual struggle to accept it in its full glory. 

Martha (Tilda Swinton) is an out-and-out toughie: a former war correspondent for The New York Times; ambitious yet broken, morally loose, and emotionally distant… you get the drill. “We are mere strangers,” she confesses when asked about her daughter, conceived in a moment of absolute passion. The father, a war veteran with severe PTSD, abandons the duo for greener pastures; that is breaking free from the shackles of haunting memories only to give in to them later (you will see). In stark contrast to this gloom is the successful and upbeat Ingrid (Julianne Moore): a writer, who has, ironically, just released a bestseller on death. A chance encounter with another friend makes Ingrid aware of Martha’s cancer diagnosis and she rushes off to meet a friend she had once shared her dreams, and a lover, with. But Martha, forever in charge of the occurrences in her life, has a rather terrifying deathbed request for her long-lost friend – to be in the next room when she embraces the inevitable through a self-prescribed euthanasia pill. Death, in The Room Next Door, is not dreaded by the dying but feared by those farthest from it.

In this adaptation of author Sigrid Nunez’s What Are You Going Through (2020), Almodóvar—his first English-language outing—masterfully laces humour with the plainness of death, and juxtaposes the fears of the living against the freedom of those on the verge of perishing. “I do not have the time for it,” jokes Martha when Ingrid recommends a thick book to read, quite matter-of-factly. The film, through subtle metaphors planted in the everyday mundanity of life, mocks those who make the business of living a humongous task that they must accomplish. This slice-of-life movie, therefore, is a silent slap to those who want to learn how to live before living. 

The Room Next Door has a non-dramatic, almost sincere, take on friendships and poses a paramount question in front of its viewers—Are all relationships black and white? Do they need to be? 

Martha and Ingrid have once had a rendezvous with the same man (a lovely John Turturro), and while no one’s ‘complaining’ about the man’s performance, at least no one’s bitter about it, too. The duo, comprising a fantastic Julianne Moore and a restrained Tilda Swinton, forge a beautiful friendship built on the foundation of something so heavy; and permanent, as if to show us that not all relationships in life need to flow in a conventionally acceptable direction. In Almodóvar’s universe, there are no good characters or bad ones. They all are people with hues of grey, much like the real world. When Martha reveals she was never faithful to their shared lover, or when Ingrid takes that same lover back without informing her dying friend about it, the director doesn’t ruin these crucial moments with a condescending background score or any shred of judgment. The characters in the movie, even in the face of adversity, are gleefully flawed—if Martha pulls a sick dress rehearsal of her dying on Ingrid, then the latter, too, reveals her dying wish to a third person without Martha’s knowledge. In The Room Next Door, there truly are no wrong answers. For, you see, judgment, or the fear of it, is for the alive and not living. 

The film resonates not only for the lessons it subtly imparts on life and relationships but also for the terrific actors it gets on board. Moore’s seemingly prim and proper Ingrid complements Swinton’s pessimistic and stoic Martha. Moore, after Still Alice, is again up against a disease she cannot seem to beat but oh boy, isn’t she winning! The supremely talented Swinton brings her A-game on for a film that requires her A-game at all times. First, she internalises the grief of a dying mother who hasn’t loved much, or at all, and then she makes peace with the fact that her life, as most others’, will be half-lived, solely through facial expressions: the twitch of the eye, quivering of the lips and the like. 

Staying true to his signature style, Pedro Almodóvar keeps the women in The Room Next Door as real as they get: pretty and promiscuous, kind and kindred. The director uses various hues of brightness to channel the permanence of life. Bold red lips and a lemon yellow trench coat for death, and various shades of pastel for dear life. Almodóvar finally ventures into the English-language cinema with a film—quite aptly—about life and living. 

While summing up The Room Next Door, something a fellow viewer said—who’s clearly got the assignment right—comes to mind. “There you go: We are all dying, let’s take it easy!” I couldn’t agree more. 

This film was premiered at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival 2024.