DAN WEBSTER:
Critiquing the work of Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar can be problematic. Because he makes films that are in many instances personal reflections of who he is, a gay man, any negative comments regarding his films can be, and sometimes are, viewed as being anti-LGBTQ.
I’ll leave that there, except to make clear—for the record—that I admire many of Almodóvar’s movies. My favorite is Talk to Her (en español: Hable con ella). But I admire many others as well, from Volver to Parallel Mothers… to basically any movie of his that stars Penelope Cruz.
Unfortunately, Almodóvar’s latest, The Room Next Door, won’t make the list. This is his first attempt at making a film in English, and the film stars two Oscar-winning actresses: Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore. And while both Swinton and Moore try their best, the big problem is the dialogue they have to deliver, lines that Almodóvar himself wrote, adapting them from Sigrid Nunez’s novel What Are You Going Through.
As with other filmmakers I can name—the late David Lynch among them—Almodóvar makes movies that are almost always instantly recognizable. To be sure, The Room Next Door doesn’t boast his usual tonal flair—think of the madcap qualities of films such as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown or the comic stylings of I’m So Excited!
Still, the two protagonists fit well into Almodóvar’s world. Being sophisticated, educated and well-dressed, they embody the film’s richly colored palette. Moreover, Almodóvar’s plot follows a familiar format: a pairing of friends, as opposed to lovers or—as is even more typical—mothers and daughters.
Those friends are Martha (played by Swinton) and Ingrid (played by Moore). Martha is a journalist, a former war correspondent, while Ingrid is a successful writer of books. Once close, the two reconnect when a mutual friend tells Ingrid that Martha is battling cancer—stage 3 cervical cancer, to be specific.
Pretty soon, the two are spending time together. And, at first, things look promising for Martha. But such positivity doesn’t last, which is when the overall theme of The Room Next Door become clear—Martha emphasizes that if she is going to die, she wants to go out on her own terms.
And to effect that ending, she asks Ingrid for a big favor: Would Ingrid be willing to aid her in the effort? At first hesitant, Ingrid does eventually agree—because, of course, that’s what friends do.
Martha rents a house in upstate New York and the two settle in. The deal is this: every morning when Ingrid rises, as long as she sees that the door to Martha’s room is open, all is fine. If it’s closed, the deed has been done.
Until then, the two friends spend time catching up, with Martha in particular sharing her war experiences, what happened to the man—a veteran stricken by PTSD—who was the father to her daughter, and the estrangement she’s had with that daughter (the casting of whom becomes a surprising reveal).
One shared experience both friends recall is a mutual past lover—a man (played by John Turturro) who shows up to take Ingrid out to lunch and who makes an arrangement that will end up proving important to her at a climactic moment when she is confronted by a zealous local police detective (played by Alessandro Nivola).
The problem with the film is that much of what passes between the two women sounds stilted. Even the skilled Moore has trouble putting any feeling behind a line such as, "Martha, I'm here for you. I'll be with you during your last days," or especially when she has to utter something as mundane as “I like fruit.”
If that awkwardness isn’t due to how Almodóvar adapted the novel’s prose, then it’s likely in how he directed his cast. Almodóvar is a good enough director to know how to get the emotion he wants. But, again, English isn’t his native language.
What Almodóvar does deserve credit for is tackling a topic that, to this day, is controversial. After all, Martha’s determination to decide how and when she should die is a right that should be as basic as is the right to life itself.
For Spokane Public Radio, I’m Dan Webster.
——
Movies 101 host Dan Webster is the senior film critic for Spokane Public Radio and a blogger for Spokesman.com.
