'The Room Next Door' Review

The Room Next Door had its North American Premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. Sony Pictures Classics will release it in theaters on December 20.

The unmistakably romantically sumptuous music of Albert Iglesias once again draws open the curtains for a film by Almodóvar. Although this is their 14th feature collaboration as composer and director, The Room Next Door marks the first time the strings have been used to reinforce dialogue in the English language. The story, one of the few not to be an original idea by the famed auteur, comes from Sigrid Nunez’s 2020 novel What Are You Going Through.

New York City serves as the backdrop, with it never looking more beautiful as the seasons and towering buildings always casting perfectly symmetrical lines. Even down to the smallest of spaces, such as Martha’s (Tilda Swinton) junk drawer, the colors pop with radiance. Unfortunately, the neverending revolving door of serenity is perpetually tinged with the darkness of reality, as Martha lounges in her perfect surroundings riddled with the cancer that will most likely kill her. Rushing to her aid once she hears the terminal news is Ingrid (Julianne Moore), a longtime friend of Martha, although they haven’t spoken in a few years on account of their busy careers (Ingrid is a famous novelist, while Martha hurries to the next battle as a war correspondent).

While time has been no barrier in the rekindling of their relationship, Martha has not been so successful with her daughter. They’ve been estranged nearly all their lives, neither of them being exceptional at fulfilling their parent-child duties. Ingrid now finds herself trying to mend that bridge before it’s too late, a timeline that’s being hastened by Martha’s decision to forgo treatment.

The closer people get to death’s door, the more honest they become about the life they’ve lived. Swinton, reunited with Almodóvar for the second time after marking his unofficial English-language debut in 2020 with the short film The Human Voice, is the active member of the actress pair, delivering a cascade of monologues about her past, a few of them supplemented with flashbacks. While Google Translate was clearly not used based on Almodóvar’s consummate professionalism and prowess as a screenwriter, quite a few moments get lost in the translation. Swinton and Moore navigate the pitfalls with relative ease, biting into the high drama with gusto. There are more than a few moments of unintentional hilarity that pivot from us laughing at the movie to laughing with it solely based on the delivery of the lead pair. The younger cast doesn’t fare nearly as well, with their handful of scenes leaving them stranded to exchange lines that could have used a little more proofreading.

It's these intermittent eyebrow-raising moments, many of them swept away before their intention can be deciphered, that keep The Room Next Door at a medium temperature. There’s always a feeling that Almodóvar could reach his trademarked boiling point of melodrama, but his confidence in the material just isn’t there. It’s still a remarkable improvement from The Human Voice and his most recent English-language short, Strange Way of Life, so there’s plenty of hope that, if he were to continue working outside his native language on such projects as his abandoned A Manual for Cleaning Women, it would reach the lofty heights we expect of him.

That bar also means that a disappointing feature from Almodóvar is still very much worth the investment. There’s still no one who serves actresses better than him, with a nice supporting turn from John Turturro (mostly interested in sex and the hopelessness that climate change has brought) thrown in there for good measure. Here’s hoping he continues to challenge himself, bringing along A-list talent looking to rise to a new level.