Ingrid (Julianne Moore) finds out an old friend, Martha (Tilda Swinton), is in the hospital, with a cancer diagnosis, undergoing an experimental treatment with swirling results. But Martha has had enough, and asks Ingrid to accompany her on a quaint holiday getaway where Martha plans to end her own life. Martha doesn’t need any help, only the comfort of knowing that someone she loves will be in “the room next door”, and this movie follows the journey and conversations taken over what could be the last couple days of their friendship. This movie is directed by Pedro Almodovar, where it has been advertised that this is Almodovar’s first movie in the English language.
Oh, artsy! The very opening shot, and the casual conversations on Martha’s hospital bed gives The Room Next Door the feeling of an intimate play. But as the movie continues on, while tiptoeing around a decidedly morose subject matter, there are heavy chunks of this film that firmly make me want to shout, “oh brother, just take the damn pill!”. The dialogue is incredibly stilted, making both main performers seem like blunt instruments to serve this movie’s cause, instead of real people to relate to. Julianne Moore is the best of it, one of my favourite actresses of the day, but even she can’t escape what is potentially a poor script, or unusual direction 😶 How many times do these characters end a sentence with “the room next door”? I thought those title drops were supposed to be used sparingly to be impactful, and they surely don’t work here with the intensity and frequency in which this movie goes about them. Also, what’s with Damien’s (John Turturro) speech in the middle of lunch about how the planet dying and how the right wing of politics are scum? Doesn’t that shoehorned seminar seemingly come out of nowhere? I reckon I could sift through this movie and extract about 10 examples of clanky intonations, phrases, or segways, that would make The Happening, or even The Room, proud 🤯 Dare I say, the movie sounds like a foreign filmmaker playing in the sandpit of the English language, and even if that’s not fair, the idea was put in my head through the marketing, and the boot fits. It wouldn’t surprise me though, to learn that the movie is intentionally like this, to capture a “fable” or “dream-like surrealism” that’s supposed to imitate common conversation and be memorable on a higher plane… And even if that is the case, in execution, I could still conclude that it’s clunky.
Nocturnal Animals was a precocious film, doing it better in ethereally reaching for answers on the highs and lows of a complex life. Even the ill-fated The Woman in the Window was probably better balanced with its melodrama, I think; and Supernova exactly hit on related matters of looming death discussed among loved ones, yet was more direct about it. I’m also bothered by how this movie begins with a story of Martha’s ex-lover Fred (Alex Høgh Anderson), who believes he hears his family’s voices coming from a burning house, and for that elaborate piece of information to never be important again. It gives this movie’s narrative the fake lure that we might be getting a ghost story, or at least that something supernatural of significance may happen by the end but it never does. It’s kind of like promising a child that at the end of the day there will be ice-cream, only for them to go to bed without sweets and wonder why they were so intently well-mannered for the entire afternoon 🤔 The Room Next Door had me waiting for this fairly boring story to ramp up or click into shape, a bit like Tilda Swinton’s other recent project, Three Thousand Years of Longing, but a wider framework never takes hold, unless you’re particularly taken by repeating poems about how snow falls the same for everyone 🙄
Another point of inquiry is this movie’s proclivity with fulfilling sex, and how Martha and Ingrid reminisce frequently about the partners they’ve had. What does Martha say? “Sex is still the best thing to ward off a fear of death?” Or something like that. Martha also has one interesting thing to say about “battling” cancer, but that’s another story 👀 But as sad as it is intellectually that Martha has reached the end of her life, perhaps I also found it harder to feel sorry for her while I’m over here sexless. Also, what does Damien say? He reckons, if he didn’t at least have sex once a day in his youth, he considered that day incomplete. Luxury! And now he’s jumping around from town to town simply lecturing for a paycheck. That’s a successful man, undoubtedly, who may’ve lost touch with the world. Personally, this disconnect, and this movie’s obsession, made me think on Moonlight – how that movie was renowned, but while well-made, I never felt overly passionately about the story, about an oppressed man never able to express himself sexually. It just didn’t register with me as something particularly gut-wrenching, yet from the other side, now thinking about it as these people in this movie, and perhaps moviegoers that will like The Room Next Door, it makes sense how in their worldview and experience, the idea of Moonlight and not having sex is tragically unthinkable. And I agree with them wholeheartedly, that good sex is life-affirming 💪 But I just don’t see that as a profound statement. But I guess a movie like this just goes to the notion that these people are not able to stop and smell the roses while they’re in it – when they’re living life and working hard. A movie like this is meant to remind people of the value of life, I suppose, but I’m fairly blasé about The Room Next Door.
It’s disappointing to see some of your favoured actors turn in bad work, or at least performances that fail to provide connection. John Turturro moves around like he’s become attached to this project at the last second, while Julianne Moore is an out-and-out professional, with a sympathetic character, but lacking depth, and still can’t make this work. Truthfully, my favourite performance in this is the one that comes by Alessandro Nivola, who is the thorough cop deemed to be an asshole by this movie’s standards 🙄 I was just happy to recognise him in something else after finding him to have a certain quality in last year’s Kraven the Hunter. The Room Next Door is a movie where characters have got their problems figured out, but don’t know they’ve got it figured out; and I’m sitting in the audience here thinking, “you’ve got it figured out”. Of course, it’s sad when a person reaches the end of their life, and they’re fortunate if they’re given the time to reflect and prepare in this manner. I think there’s a partially resonant throughline in this too, where Ingrid gains an understanding in combating her own heightened fear of death, so at least that’s something. And The Room Next Door is tranquil, like wading in a swimming pool, but not for me. Probably based off a novel your mother would like.
2.5
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