The Room Next Door Film Review: Touching Drama

Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door offers a tender and delicate reflection on life, death, and everything in between.  

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar, The Room Next Door follows two friends, Ingrid and Martha (Tilda Swinton). The two were very close when they were younger and working at the same magazine where both of them got their start, but later became distant. After years of not being in contact, Ingrid, now a successful novelist, finds out that Martha is ill with terminal cancer. While rekindling their friendship, Martha reflects on her life, from her relationship with her resentful daughter and her life as a war reporter, to her memories with Damien (John Turturro) who both Ingrid and Martha had a relationship with. At the same time, Martha is exploring her options in order to end her life on her own terms and with minimal suffering.

The Room Next Door is evidently about death, and yet everything in it is full of life. The characters themselves are an example of this.This is especially true with Martha who, despite everything that is happening around her, does anything in her power to remain in charge of her own life and its end. And even at the end of the film, it never really feels like Martha is truly gone. In many ways, she lives on in the patio chair she used to sit in, in her daughter who finally learns more about her, in Ingrid’s words, and in the snow falling down from the sky.

The Room Next Door also feels very much alive in every single one of his shots. From the city skyline to the forest the two protagonists explore in the second part of the film, to the recurrent appearance of  “snow falling faintly through the universe […] upon all the living and the dead,” to use the James Joyce quote from the poem “The Dead” that Martha references throughout the film. I particularly liked the allegory of the snow as a sign foreshadowing death that always accompanies the two women and the very narration of this story and its inevitable ending.

In this sense, I especially loved how the film deals with such a complex and loaded topic as euthanasia. In a time when end-of-life and assisted suicide are still illegal and criminalised in many countries, The Room Next Door offers us the best defence to this topic, without even trying to. In fact, the film’s strength lies in how natural the conversation around euthanasia becomes. Rather than feeling self-righteous or moralizing on a debate that still divides many people to this day, the movie simply chooses to tell us a story that happens to organically talk about a woman wanting to end her own life to prevent further suffering.

The acting is also very strong. Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton may very well be two of the most exciting actresses working right now and seeing them opposite each other is just a joy to witness. Their chemistry as friends is also excellent from the very first moment the audience sees them share the screen in The Room Next Door, to the point where we almost wish that there was something more to their relationship than friendship. John Turturro is also a fantastic addition to the cast in his portrayal of a complicated man who offers another perspective to this story. His outlook is a lot less personal, and arguably more negative, as he considers the entire planet and its possible death due to climate change.

However, The Room Next Door isn’t without flaws. Its dialogue feels too expositionary at times, especially in the first act, when Martha and Ingrid reconnect. Much of the backstory that they tell each other seems to function more for the audience to understand the context, life, and relationships of the characters rather than be integral to the plot. The flashback scenes are also too artificial and, ultimately, unnecessary. While flashbacks can usually work quite well, in this case, they take away the attention from Swinton’s performance during monologues that could have worked very well on their own too.

Admittedly, The Room Next Door is not a perfect film, nor is it Almodóvar’s best work by any means, but none of this takes anything away from the beauty of the movie. With its outstanding cast and fascinating script, the film manages to explore a sensitive topic in a very tender and human way. The central theme of the film also makes it such a necessary watch in the current climate where discussions around euthanasia are becoming more and more prevalent in multiple country’s politics. 

The Room Next Door had its World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 2, 2024 and will be released in UK & Irish cinemas on October 25, 2024 and in US theaters on December 20.