The Room Next Door: Confronting the ultimate enemy

The Room Next Door (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for thematic content, sexual candor and occasional profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Greater love hath no friend...

 

Pedro Almodóvar traditionally makes films about women — often a pair of women — and they always talk a lot. It’s tempting to assume that he’d have been happier as a director of stage dramas, but that would overlook the beautifully composed cinematography that always highlights his productions — in this case, courtesy of Eduard Grau — and which almost becomes a character in itself.

 

During one of her better days, Martha (TIlda Swinton, left) and Ingrid (Julianne Moore)
visit a bookstore, where the former buys books she'll never have time to read.

This is writer/director Almodóvar’s first English-language film, and he’s equally adept with dialogue that feels and sounds just as authentic, at every moment.

Ingrid (Julianne Moore) and Martha (Tilda Swinton) were close friends during their early, post-college years, when they worked together at the same magazine. Ingrid subsequently became a successful author of autobiographical fiction, with legions of adoring fans; Martha became a war correspondent energized by the adrenaline-charged buzz of being in a danger zone.

 

They lost touch, as the years passed. The film begins as the Manhattan-based Ingrid chances to learn, from a mutual acquaintance during a bookstore signing, that Martha has been hospitalized.

 

Ingrid visits immediately, and is stunned by the news that Martha has end-stage cervical cancer.

 

What follows is essentially a two-hander, which occasionally expands via flashbacks and Ingrid’s chats with close friend Damian (John Turturro), who — back in the day — was a lover to both women (sequentially, not simultaneously). There’s a comfort and familiarity to the ongoing conversations between Moore and Swinton; they look, sound and move like longtime best friends.

 

We’ve all experienced this dynamic. Reuniting with some long-unseen friends feels awkward and uncomfortable; you can’t wait to depart (probably permanently). But it’s different with friends who somehow remain fiercely close, despite distance and separation; you fall right back into the pattern of finishing each other’s sentences, and perhaps even continuing a conversation cut short, as if no time had passed.

 

Reminiscences and catching-up comes first, although Martha’s condition obviously hovers throughout.