THE ROOM NEXT DOOR: A Film Snob’s Dream

Pedro Almodovar’s English-language debut film The Room Next Door proves the filmmaker has finally become a parody of himself. The film stars Julianne Moore as Ingrid, a writer recruited by her old friend Martha (Tilda Swinton) to be by her side as she commits suicide from terminal cancer. As the women grow closer, they eventually spend Martha’s last days in a country house as Martha inches closer to death. They reminisce on life, love, climate change, Martha’s history as a war photographer, and everything in between on their surreal journey to the end of one of their lives.

On paper, this feels like a nice little two-hander. A meditation on the universe, if you will, helmed by one of the most eloquent wordsmiths in all of cinema. A surefire Oscar winner, obviously. And yet, somehow, the film’s execution fails in some of the most basic ways imaginable, turning some beautiful writing and performances into an awkward, overwrought mess. My theatre was laughing at Julianne Moore crying her eyes out, checking their phones and one guy even fell asleep. It’s not the worst movie of the year, saved by some titanic performances, but still reads as a fascinatingly botched classic. Where did it all go wrong? Let’s review:

Gunning For The Oscars Sweep

Ingrid is an accomplished writer in NYC who randomly hears that her old friend Martha is in the hospital for cancer. After visiting her, the two reminisce about old times, growing closer as Martha’s condition worsens. Martha often relates stories about her estranged family, career as a war photographer, and thoughts on the universe.

Eventually, Martha confesses she has plans to commit suicide, asking Ingrid to be in the room next door when she goes. After some convincing, Ingrid reluctantly agrees and the two plan to move into a country house for a month leading up to the date. As Ingrid grows increasingly anxious discussing death (like any rational person would), Martha grows more and more excited to let go.

Ingrid sneaks out to confide in her and Martha’s mutual ex-boyfriend (John Turturro), but returns to find Martha dead. Traumatized, Ingrid escapes the police’s suspicions and bonds with Martha’s estranged daughter as the film draws to a confusing end.

If your film relies this heavily on monologues, it lives and dies by its lead actors. So too is The Room Next Door saved by co-stars Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, mining every emotion they can out of the film’s haphazard writing. Moore plays the anxious best friend to perfection, looking emotionally haggard every second of her screen time. Swinton’s performance is more hit-or-miss due to the lengthy random monologues she’s saddled with, but nonetheless manages to pull off a rambling author obsessed with death well enough.

However, the surrounding elements of the film fail to mesh together into a cohesive whole, leading to the film coming across wildly uneven.

I Don’t Watch Movies, I Watch Films, Get It Right

Over the course of his career, it’s clear that Almodovar has become increasingly less fascinated with story in favor of meditation on the universe. And unfortunately, this screenplay comes across as the unfiltered wandering thoughts of an aging auteur rather than anything resembling a coherent thought. Flashbacks and long rambling dialogue sequences glut the film’s first half, grinding the plot to a complete halt to write thematic exposes on war, climate change, intimacy and everything in between.

While admirable, the lack of an engaging character dynamic between the leads severs any investment an audience can have. Or in other words, why do I care about Martha bemoaning climate change? I barely know her. It doesn’t help that Almodovar’s usually poetic dialogue feels incredibly stilted. It’s as if he wrote the script in Spanish, then Google Translated it to English. The film’s defenders may argue this tonal choice was intentional to add to the film’s surreal nature. To that, I say: all you did was take me out of the story. If that was the effect, then…. I guess well done.

It’s fascinating how this film’s most basic components feel botched. The score, for example, feels incredibly over-the-top. It renders simple and quiet moments so painfully melodramatic it leans on parody. My theatre laughed at a loooooooong sequence of Ingrid sobbing because it felt so overwrought. It’s as if the characters, score, and writing believe they’re telling us an epic,  despite being laughably pretentious.

When the film FINALLY settles into a comfortable rhythm, the tacked-on ending sequence again detracts from the film’s message. An overly long interrogation scene attempts to jolt some life into the stodgy film, but instead provides an awkward tonal shift that ends the film on an unintentionally confusing note. Moore is left with nothing but paragraphs of dialogue telling the audience how much her character has changed despite none of it coming across authentically.

The film’s plot is unique enough, at its most powerful when tackling the central theme of the ethics of suicide. Ingrid slowly growing more anguished as the gravity of witnessing Martha die grows closer is genuinely powerful cinema. I found my own palms sweaty in discomfort as Martha joyfully explained her plan to die. Almodovar’s ability to mine sympathy from all walks of life is unparalleled. It’s a shame, then, that this aspect of the film takes so…. frustatingly…. long to finally settle into.

Conclusion

In a vacuum, many of the film’s sequences could be powerful. But their power would lie in the quiet spaces, the stories of a weary life left unsaid. The Room Next Door, unfortunately for itself, says too much and yet nothing of substance. Snapshots of the two women’s lives together never coalesce into something more. The development of their relationship feels uneven and thinly defined until the film’s 3^rd act. And, by the end, when Ingrid finds herself changed by it all, she’s unable to define exactly why.

Maybe that’s by design: deliberate vagueness to remind the audience that each interaction is profound even if we can’t tell why. Maybe this, maybe that, maybe nothing matters. Maybe every awkward choice this movie made was by design.

But if I spend two hours of my life watching The Room Next Door and I tune out halfway through, then all of it was for nothing.

And in the end, Almodovar can write any thought experiment he likes. He’s earned that right as an auteur. But if there’s not an audience to appreciate it, then it’ll die a quiet death with nobody in the room next door.

The Room Next Door is now playing in theatres nationwide.