45/34
Ingrid and Martha were close friends in their youth, when they worked together at the same magazine. After years of not being in touch, they meet again in an extreme but strangely sweet situation. When Pedro Almodóvar sent Tilda Swinton the script, he asked her who should play Ingrid. Both had Julianne Moore in mind. Featured in The 7PM Project: Episode 8, September 2024 (2024). I was curious to see what Pedro Almodóvar would do differently in his first non-Spanish-language film, built around two of the most talented actors working today. The answer, unfortunately: disappointing. There are many ways in which "The Room Next Door" lacks what makes Almodóvar’s work so distinctive – the spontaneity, the sense of improvisation, the comedic timing, the sparkling ensemble work — but the main flaw of this film, as I see it, is that it' ;is simply overwritten, something that is rare in his previous work. The screenplay (which he is believed to have written) is adapted from a novel by Sigrid Nunez, which I haven’t read, but it sounds like huge chunks of dialogue are literally lifted from it, with much of it plodding and stilted, slowing down and emptying the film, where Almodóvar’s work is usually characterized by terse dialogue and mad forward movement, immersing you in the characters' a world with little exposition – as a viewer, you’re kind of just there, hanging on for dear life and figuring out relationships and social context as you go, grabbing what you can. Even in movies that deal with dark themes (“Pain and Glory” or “Bad Education” come to mind), the plot and its background unfold in compelling ways (even when they’re actually crazy if you stop and think about them) that rely on our intuition and empathy and are only marginally dependent on an extended expository narrative. Here, it’s the opposite: the characters talk and explain endlessly, with a few awkward flashes to establish context. Little is left to our imagination. So while there are some of the usual Almodóvarian hallmarks, particularly in the excellent use of saturated, artfully coordinated colors and in the taste of many of the sets and costumes (here with lots of beautiful still lifes of flowers and fruit), these are reduced to props – they don’t serve to tell a story and to overwhelm you into accepting the reality of his insanely artificial visual worlds in the way they do in most of his films. And the computer-generated New York backdrops feel completely artificial and therefore become meaningless. Almodóvar’s films certainly have plots, often quite intricate (which is part of the fun), but they don’t feel plot-driven, even when they do. “The Room Next Door,” on the other hand, revolves around its plot, and it’s weaker than that. With talents like Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore (plus the esteemed John Turturro) in front of the camera, there are bound to be, and are, some great, often very moving moments—how could there not be, especially given the plot’s central premise and the way it both strengthens and strains a long-standing, close friendship in its final days? But the script’s verbosity particularly undermines Swinton. Her incredible strength lies in her powerful, enigmatic presence and in her understatement. By my unscientific count, she speaks as much dialogue here as she did in at least her last three or four films (the ones I’ve seen, that is) combined. Recall her stunning performance in another relatively recent film about a strained relationship between two women, "The Eternal Daughter" (2022), in which she plays both an aging mother and her middle-aged daughter in devastating fashion. The relationship between the two is subtle, shifting, complex, rich, and preoccupied – and yet so little of it is based on explicit dialogue.
