The Room Next Door

F Watchlist

Over the course of his fifty-year career, Pedro Almodóvar (75) has evolved from the flamboyant enfant terrible of Madrid's post-Franco scene to a distinguished older gentleman of the world. There is no costume or prop in his films that does not exude exquisite taste, no lighting, framing, or orchestration that does not contribute to the aesthetic cocoon in which Almodóvar's characters defy increasingly adverse circumstances with ironic composure. In Almodóvar's first feature-length film in English, Tilda Swinton plays Martha, a former war reporter suffering from terminal cancer in a New York designer apartment, who chooses her former colleague and friend Ingrid (Julianne Moore), herself a successful writer, to accompany her in her final days. Martha has obtained a suicide pill on the dark web, and Ingrid is to occupy the neighboring room in a luxury villa during Martha's last days until Martha's door remains closed as a sign that euthanasia has been carried out. The plan triggers conversations about the course of Martha's life, of which we see an episode from the Iraq War and one about the father of her estranged daughter. Both subplots remain as incidental to the main plot as John Turturro as the ex-boyfriend of both women and professorial disaster warning. The overtness with which Almodóvar makes the characters his mouthpiece is irritating, but behind it the real questions arise: Is the film about the supposed taming of the uncontrollable, which even mitigates death to a mere inconvenience? And is the maestro aware of the imposition that Martha's capricious idea of a surprise suicide for her friend represents? One is not entirely sure, but one thing is certain: Tilda Swinton cuts a fine figure even as a corpse.