The Room Next Door (12A)

Former war correspondent Martha is resigned to the tightening grip of inoperable stage three cervical cancer. "I think I deserve a good death," she coolly informs author friend Ingrid, outlining a plan to spend her final weeks in a rented property near Woodstock with a euthanasia pill obtained illegally on the dark web. While Martha awkwardly articulates her desire to stay in control of her illness, a distraught but compliant Ingrid seeks comfort in the company of mutual old flame Damian.

LondonNet Film Review

The Room Next Door (12A) Film Review from LondonNet

I have been a gushing admirer of Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar’s work since the sexually charged delirium of Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown gate-crashed my teenage years. All About My Mother and Talk To Her both merited glowing five-star reviews and ranked in my top 10 films of their respective years, and the most recent pictures, Pain And Glory and Parallel Mothers, have been terrific, continuing the filmmaker’s on-screen love affairs with long-running collaborators Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz…

So, it is with an incredibly heavy heart that I must concede The Room Next Door is among my least favourite Almodovar pictures. His first full-length feature shot entirely in the English language draws inspiration from Sigrid Nunez’s novel What Are You Going Through to navigate the divisive issue of euthanasia through the eyes of two female friends. The Room Next Door unfolds as a heightened melodrama and provides Tilda Swinton with an eye-catching central role as a former war correspondent, resigned to the tightening grip of inoperable stage three cervical cancer. Julianne Moore plays her morally conflicted gal pal and travelling companion on the journey towards eternal slumber.

So much potential brilliance on screen and behind the camera but something vital, an emotional connection to characters in crisis, is lost in translation from Spanish to English and left me feeling crushingly disappointed. Almodovar’s scripts are usually so nimble and spry but here, portentous dialogue (“There are lots of ways to live inside tragedy”) limps from trembling lips and draws attention to disparate, mannered performances that elicit tears from the two leads. I was strangely unmoved.

“I think I deserve a good death,” Martha (Swinton) coolly informs author friend Ingrid (Moore), outlining a plan to spend her final weeks in a rented property near Woodstock with a euthanasia pill obtained illegally on the dark web. While Martha awkwardly articulates her desire to stay in control (“Cancer can’t get me if I get me first”), a distraught but compliant Ingrid seeks comfort in the company of mutual old flame Damian (John Turturro), who likens his energetic bedroom antics with Martha to “having sex with a terrorist”.

The Room Next Door kept me at arm’s length from vital conversations about the humane termination of life on request. Swinton and Moore are compelling but they are trapped in their respective orbits with no visible gravitational pull towards each other. “Can I tell your story?” Ingrid asks Martha at one point. “You can do what you want, I won’t be here,” she sombrely replies. Almodovar does what he wants with the women’s tangled stories and, lamentably, I was there to witness it.

– Jo Planter