{"id":10710,"date":"2025-04-03T08:06:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T12:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10710"},"modified":"2025-03-31T20:08:25","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T00:08:25","slug":"the-room-next-door","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/03\/the-room-next-door\/","title":{"rendered":"The Room Next Door."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Pedro Almod\u00f3var waited until his 23rd<\/sup> feature film to make his first one in English, released the same month as the Spanish director turned 75. The Room Next Door<\/em>, an adaptation of part of a Sigrid Nunez novel<\/a>, is an intense movie about friendship and duty, driven by two outstanding performances by Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, a sort of women-centered parallel to his 2022 film Pain & Glory<\/a><\/em>. (You can rent it on iTunes<\/a>, Amazon<\/a>, etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ingrid (Moore) is signing copes of her latest book when an old acquaintance reaches the table and informs her that their former colleague Martha (Swinton) has cervical cancer. Ingrid visits Martha, whom she hasn\u2019t seen in many years, and the two begin spending more time together, as Ingrid realizes Martha is quite lonely, with only an estranged daughter remaining of her family. When a promising treatment turns out to be unsuccessful, Martha decides to end her life on her own terms and asks Ingrid to accompany her to a house in the country, so that Martha knows someone who cares about her is in the room next door as she dies. Ingrid ends up agreeing, and the remainder of the film follows the two women through the last few weeks of Martha\u2019s life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are only three characters of any significance in The Room Next Door<\/em>, with John Turturro appearing as Martha\u2019s former husband and Ingrid\u2019s former lover, putting all of the pressure on Swinton and Moore to carry the film \u2013 and, naturally, two of the greatest actors of their generation are up to the task. Swinton\u2019s performance is the more surprising of the pair\u2019s, as she\u2019s largely understated throughout the film; she\u2019s played big or weird or both so often in recent years that it\u2019s a treat to see her dial it back like this. Martha\u2019s insecure and maybe neurotic, but resigned to her death, in contrast to Ingrid, whose latest book is about her own crippling fear of dying, and Swinton gives the character the right combination of nervous energy with a touch of irascibility. Ingrid is the more straightforward character, although Moore\u2019s challenge is navigating the wide range of emotions she faces across the film \u2013 it\u2019s clear at the start that she and Martha were never that close, or at least Ingrid didn\u2019t think they were, so she ends up growing fonder of Martha as Martha\u2019s death becomes inevitable and the favors she asks become more significant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(As an aside, I realized after watching this that I\u2019d never seen Michael Clayton<\/a><\/em>, the 2007 film for which Swinton won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress \u2013 still her only Oscar nomination \u2013 so I watched it. That performance is also quite understated, and also one of her best.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The production itself is lavish, visually and metaphorically. Nearly every scene pops with strong, vivid colors, even more so when they head out of the city to a luxurious house in the woods, with gorgeous shots of the forest just beyond the house\u2019s deck. Almod\u00f3var has a long history of using red for its symbolic value; the door to Martha\u2019s room is red, and she wears deep reds many times in the film, while the chaise longue where Ingrid usually reclines on the deck is also red, certainly an unusual color (and fabric) for outdoor furniture. (Martha lays on the green one.) There\u2019s also a sense of wealth and even abundance throughout the film that cuts both ways \u2013these are two privileged women who can afford to do this and, for Martha, face the potential consequences; yet the contrast between this lush setting and the inevitability of Martha\u2019s death underscores that all the money in the world can\u2019t change the fact that we\u2019re mortal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The estranged daughter does appear near the end of the film, providing a brief but somewhat telling coda that gives a little more insight into Martha\u2019s character \u2013 and into Ingrid\u2019s as well. We know Martha\u2019s going to die before the end, but rather than concluding on the most morbid note, or with something clich\u00e9d like a funeral, the story ends with a conversation and a scene on the deck that connects to an earlier scene. Both scenes include passages from Joyce\u2019s short story The Dead<\/em>, while earlier Martha and Ingrid also watch John Huston\u2019s 1987 film adaptation \u2013 laying it on a bit thick, I suppose, although it is considered one of the greatest short stories written in the English language. Almod\u00f3var has settled into a mellower groove as he\u2019s aged, dispensing with the sort of shocking elements that helped make his reputation as an avant-garde filmmaker while he focuses more on character development and dialogue. The Room Next Door<\/em> is (at least) his third straight film in this vein, and I think it\u2019s the best of the trio thanks to the two lead performances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pedro Almod\u00f3var waited until his 23rd feature film to make his first one in English, released the same month as the Spanish director turned 75. The Room Next Door, an adaptation of part of a Sigrid Nunez novel, is an intense movie about friendship and duty, driven by two outstanding performances by Tilda Swinton and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1417,25,161,215],"class_list":["post-10710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2024-movies","tag-adaptations","tag-highly-recommended","tag-movies","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10711,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10710\/revisions\/10711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}