TIlda Swinton and Julianne Moore together in a film has that mythological flavor of duels between adults. No one expected a flaming type thing Bette Davis and Joan Crawfordunparalleled for character oppositions, declared hatred and horror tack, but their (very correct) comparison in The room next door by Pedro Almodóvar it is certainly more interesting than other sensational yet disappointing encounters. For example Meryl Streep and Glenn Close in The house of the spiritswhich, in addition to being buried in memories, ended up being just “the time in which two very cumbersome names ended up on the same set without leaving a trace”.
In The room next doorinstead, the staging is in favor of total mirroring. Tilda and Julianne – both redheads, a year apart, an Oscar each, the fame of performers with sensitivity to the dark sides – they are two friends who meet again after years on the occasion of Martha’s (Swinton) cancer. Event that pushes Ingrid (Moore) towards rapprochement. And then to a fatal pact: support Martha’s choice to kill herself with a pill bought on the dark web and to live with her in a villa immersed in the woods, until the day he decides to ingest it. The warning? The closed bedroom post, the next room.
Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore: the cold meeting in The room next door
In Pedro’s classic universe, colorful but never so geometric and never so artificially fashionable, the two actresses they measure themselves in a pas de deux of almost absolute cerebral pleasure. Yes, the theme of euthanasia is touching, a cosmic and irreducible question, but the chamber drama works more for evocative spatialities and for contrasting characters, fractures, moral failures and compelling dialogues. What, in short, (and superficially), one would have expected from the pairing of Tilda and Julianne in an Almodóvar film, that is, an Almodóvar with two native English-speaking women, it is a senile work of profound stillness. So Nordic in rigor that one wonders why there are certain false false notes (the war segment of Martha reporter or the close-up on the metal box of Dolce & Gabbana).
Tilda Swinton and Julianna Moore in “The Next Room.” (Warner Bros.)
Beautiful accessories, frozen emotions
At 75 years old, Almodóvar looks like Woody Allen who at 43 did Bergman (Interiorswhich could be a paraphrase of The Next Room). An author arrived at the gesture as it happens to artists after having handled so much material for a lifetime. If euthanasia is therefore the theme of the film, and how a wealthy woman deals with it, that is, by going to a prestigious minimalist refuge, then it is also Rossy De Palma, the explosive jokes, the oddities, Madrid, the circuit of irresistible nervousness whose formula America wanted to copy as soon as the case broke out by the Spanish director of Women on the brink. (For years there was talk of a remake starring Jane Fonda, then with Madonna and then with Paula Prentiss; there was finally an unsuccessful musical version staged in 2010.)
Pressure of the film in English or not, of the high tone against Almodóvar’s carioca formula (already quite pruned over the years), The room next door However, it seems like an act of sincere necessity. AND the austere faces of Tilda and Julianne are the only possible synthesis.
Again, from the teaser trailer in the cinema no one expected anything flamboyant from the Swinton-Moore couple. And, even if the formal status – as well as fame – of the two is one of the reasons why the film won a Golden Lion in Venicefrom the women director – yes, the formulas matter and condemn – the regret for a more disruptive exploitation remains. As often happens with musical duets between pop stars, for one memorable one there are a hundred negligible ones. Although one Tilda more regimented than usual is already a good news.
Festivals and Oscars are not won with the best film. Nor is it convincing if the atrocious thought of a death pill bought on the black market continually comes to mind diverted by the exceptionality of sweaters, furniture and accessories.
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