THE ROOM NEXT DOOR
TWO AND A HALF STARS Martha has terminal cancer and will choose her own time of death. It's illegal, and she asks Ingrid to help. #THEROOMNEXTDOOR
Starring Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton
Celebrated Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER) is the latest in a line of filmmakers who’ve come unstuck tackling their first English-language feature. Perhaps it has been lost in translation, perhaps in relocating to upstate New York, perhaps Sigrid Nunez’s source material is a poor choice - perhaps a combination. The result is a surprisingly arch, oddly cold and frequently jolting account of a woman’s decision to end her life.
Almodovar is most comfortable walking the line between humanism and melodrama. He is shocking, exhilarating, playful, funny and always heartfelt. While elements persist, this intolerably affected portrait of death, friendship, loyalty and regret is less a deeply felt exploration and more a pamphlet (albeit a beautiful one) about the perils of euthanasia. Less Tom Stoppard, more Tom Ford.
THE ROOM NEXT DOOR opens at a New York book launch when Ingrid (Julianne Moore) helpfully explains to a fan that she’s afraid of death. Minutes later an acquaintance informs her that their friend Martha (Tilda Swinton) is terminally unwell. Stunned, Ingrid promptly visits Martha who has stage three cancer, had been ‘ready for the end’ but a trial treatment is working. Thus the pair have time to reconnect after years of friendship apathy.
There are a few yesteryear sequences to block out the back story - Martha was married, has an estranged daughter, she and Ingrid both dated Damian (“great sex”) - but coffee dates only go so far. When Martha learns that the treatment hasn’t taken, she asks Ingrid to help her with Plan B, illegal euthanasia. They’ll stay at a spectacular modernist house up-state, all Ingrid has to do is keep her company - easy to do in this lavish dwelling - and not incriminate herself when the police come calling.
The setting allows Almodóvar to decorate in the way we love; primary colours for the rooms, their clothes, Martha’s giant sweater and the door (red, of course) to her bedroom. If it’s open she’s still alive, closed means she’s done the deed. All of which would create a beautiful background if not for the ugly foreground dialogue. Almodóvar’s typically graceful stewardship is at constant odds with his ham-fisted script and, consequently, the performances of his stars, who can’t overcome one flat line after another. Material as wooden as Martha’s purchase of a euthanasia pill from the dark web might be funny if we were certain the director was in on the joke. Like Damian’s non-sequitur eco-rant later in the film that attempts link climate change, the rise of the right and bodily autonomy, it’s awkward and divorced from any clear purpose other than leaden exposition.
Euthanasia is no laughing matter and THE ROOM NEXT DOOR is no comedy - far from it - but it's a topic that deserves more humanity than this. The film is stunningly beautiful - no one shoots like Almodóvar and poolside scenes of the women recreating Edward Hopper are breathtakingly elegant. However a Tom Ford vision of assisted dying doesn’t help the conversation, it’s a distraction.
There’s a burst of late-period urgency about THE ROOM NEXT DOOR as Almodóvar grapples with questions of mortality impermanence and legacy. Snowy post-climatic references to Joyce’s The Dead underline this. But grappling and landing are different things and it’s fair to say this doesn’t land well. Lacking the nuanced, heartfelt complexity of his best work - and there are many to chose from - you’ll be reluctantly disappointed.
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