A One Mann’s Movies review of “The Room Next Door” (2024) (From the 2024 London Film Festival).
Like London buses, you get one film about “Stege 3 cervical cancer” and another one comes down Shaftsbury Avenue right behind it. Hot on the heels of “We Live in Time” is Almodovar’s latest ,”The Room Next Door”. Here, the character of Martha (Tilda Swinton) is well advanced on her journey and the drama of the film is more focused on the topical subject of euthanasia and the right to choose a ‘good death’.
Bob the Movie Man Rating:
“The Room Next Door” Plot Summary:
Best selling author Ingrid (Julianne Moore) makes contact with her old friend, war-correspondent Martha
(Tilda Swinton) who is ill with cancer. Ingrid is terrified of death, as she writes about in her books. But as one of her oldest friends Martha comes to her with a difficult request.
Certification:
UK: 12A; US: PG-13. (From the BBFC web site: “Infrequent strong language, drug misuse, moderate threat, upsetting scenes.”)
Talent:
Starring: Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, John Turturro, Melina Matthews, Alex Høgh Andersen, Esther McGregor, Melina Matthews.
Directed by: Pedro Almodóvar.
Written by: Pedro Almodóvar. (From the novel by Sigrid Nunez).
Running Time: 1h 47m.
“The Room Next Door” Summary:
Positives:
- Beautifully shot, with the typically vibrant pallette of an Almodóvar film.
- The end of the film, with its positioning of euthanasia and police involvement is way more interesting that the first half.
Negatives:
- I found the dialogue, particularly in the first half, really awkward and stagey and not well delivered by the usually excellent Swinton and Moore.
- Lots of irrelevent side-shows including a house fire and an Iraqi love story.
Review of “The Room Next Door”:
Lost in Translation?
I’ve generally quite enjoyed the output of Pedro Almodóvar in the past. Although I’ve never gone back through the catalogue of his older films, I thought 2022’s “Parallel Mothers” was excellent (4*s); 2020’s “The Roads Not Taken” good (3.5*); and 2019’s “Pain and Glory” really fantastic (4.5*). But I’m afraid his latest just didn’t do it for me.
My main complaint was with the dialogue which I found horribly contrived, unrealistic and delivered in a very ‘stagey’ way. There’s a horribly clunky early scene between Ingrid and Martha that is typical “Tell” rather than “Show”. Long, laborious expositions that go on and on and on. Martha at one point declares that she is a war correspondent which Ingrid obviously already full-well knows! (The only interest here is that this is the second time in a month we are featuring a female war correspondent, after Kate Winslet in the much better file “Lee“. “I’ve always looked like a man” comments Martha, reminding me of Winslet tucking her hair into her tin helmet.)
I wonder whether some of the problem here was in the translation into the English? (Although “The Roads Not Taken” was also in English, but I remember it being a significantly less ‘talky’ picture than this one.)
Random side roads.
The film doesn’t seem to stick to its knitting. There is enough story to be explored in the whole euthanasia angle, but Almodóvar takes us off into a couple of cul de sacs of his own making:
- there’s a backstory about Martha’s old boyfriend – a Vietnam vet and father of her child. What’s the purpose of this? We get to meet the estranged daughter (comically, also Swinton) but there seems little drama in Ingrid recounting what Martha had told her, third-hand. It’s not helped by some rather wooden performances from Alex Høgh Andersen and Esther McGregor as the young couple in the flashback scenes.
- there’s a flashback to Martha’s reporting during the Iraq war and a recollection of a relationship between two men that she meets there. But again, this just seems to be a time-filler and bear no relation to the main plot.
Moore and Swinton
I’m afraid the effect of the (imho) poor dialogue meant that I wasn’t greatly impressed with the performance of either Julianne Moore or Tilda Swinton. They are normally both excellent. But here, I just didn’t believe the words coming out of their mouths (and part of me suspects that they didn’t either!) Martha does have one good line in this part of the film though: when making the case for her assisted death, she declares “Cancer can’t get me if I get me first”.
The pair picked up the performance for me in the second part of the film after they go on their “vacation”. They get more of a chance to act in that half rather than just spout verbiage. We also start to explore some of the more interesting problems with euthanasia. Is Martha capable of making an informed choice? Martha complains that she is suffering from “chemo-brain” and Ingrid questions whether her decision making now is influenced by that too.
The Right to a Good Death
Which is all a bit of a shame really, since the subject matter of giving terminally ill citizens a ‘right to die’ on their own terms is a very topical subject in the UK at the moment. The indefatigable, but terminally ill, Dame Esther Rantzen is championing the cause and a bill is due to be voted on in the UK Parliament in the near future.
In the US (or at least in New York State) it is clearly illegal and Ingrid can be prosecuted for aiding and abetting a crime. But even this aspect of the story feels like a bit of a damp squib in the film. An evangelical Christian police officer pursuing the case just disappears from the story after Ingrid’s lawyer (Melina Matthews) turns up.
Lovely to look at.
To balance some of my negative comments, the film is glorious to look at reflecting as it does Almodóvar’s bold use of colour and cinematographer Eduard Grau’s ability to capture it. The framing of some of the shots reveals Almodóvar’s prowess as a master film-maker. As a neat example of the colour pallette, Martha points out what might or might not be a genuine Edward Hopper painting, showing a brightly coloured painting of people sunbathing, before going out onto the patio to find vividly bright sun-loungers there.
Summary Thoughts on “The Room Next Door”
This one was a bit of a disappointing ‘miss’ for me I’m afraid (which is a rarity at this year’s LFF). For me, it’s just not top-Almodóvar. But looking at the current critic Tomatometer score of 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, I’m clearly in the minority here! I’d normally shrug my shoulders and think, “well that’s just down to personal taste”. But I really think in this case, they must have been watching a different film from me.
Where to Watch it (Powered by Justwatch)
Trailer for “The Room Next Door”:
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2KzqkCIAxQ.
Subscribe
Don’t forget, you can subscribe to One Mann’s Movies to receive future reviews by email right here. No salesman will call!
