Pedro Almodóvar is very interested in human interactions, good and bad. “The Room Next Door,” the Oscar winner’s first film entirely in English, has been highly anticipated.
Briefly, Martha and Ingrid are close friends who reconnect after an absence of many years. Martha is a famed photojournalist, and Ingrid is an author whose most recent book is about her aversion to the concept of death. Martha is in the middle of an unsuccessful treatment for terminal cancer. The treatment, which the doctors want to continue, is painful and only gives her another few months at best. Over coffee and pastries with Ingrid, she discusses what she really wants. She wants to choose her own moment to die in a setting of her choice with a friend close by, the proverbial room next door, to be a witness to the aftermath and report it. She has a pill, obtained illegally, and has rented a spectacular vacation home in the countryside for a month, but what she needs is the friend to stay in the room next to hers. She won’t announce the time or date, but there will be a code. Ingrid, needless to say, is shocked and more than reluctant. She wasn’t Martha’s first choice, but two others turned her down. Martha rather enjoys the irony of having her close friend Ingrid, who is death-phobic, be that person. Ingrid eventually accepts.
There are no spoilers here. Martha will die; Ingrid will be there. No action, no conflict, no story, the end. It’s not that there couldn’t be a story here. The right to die on one’s own terms has been done before, and in most cases, much better (e.g., “Amour,” “Me Before You” and “Whose Life Is It Anyway?”). Almodóvar, like him or not, has had moments of brilliant storytelling in the past, often equally laced with humor and horror. Here, he has neither. Forgetting that film is a visual medium, he tells this story expositionally. Writing the script himself, the dialogue is stiff and unnatural. Rarely does a movie succeed when the entire story is told as a conversation between two people where emotion, conflict and character take a back seat. “My Dinner with André” is the only film I can think of where the entire action is set at a table for two in a restaurant where André Gregory and Wallace Shawn trade anecdotes and world views. To date, I don’t know why it worked, but it did. Maybe it was the director, Louis Malle, someone I admired immensely, and maybe it was the skill of the writers, Gregory and Shawn, who knew how to make it all look improvisational.
But “The Room Next Door” is all expositional and therein lies the problem. Rule one: tell it in a book; show it in a movie (this was based on a book by Sigrid Nunez called “What Are You Going Through?”). Worse, however, is how bad and stilted the dialogue is, like a poor translation from a different language (too on the nose?). Episodes in Martha’s life that were used to illustrate earlier conflicts are told in flashbacks that look edited in at the last moment before final cut. That she has an estranged daughter, discussed in any number of conversations, is a conflict that is left dangling. If any of this comes off at all is due to the skill of the actors he chose to read (not act) his words, like a preproduction table read. Julianne Moore as Ingrid and Tilda Swinton as Martha try their best, and if the movie is bearable at all, it is because of them. John Turturro, Damian, a mutual friend and former lover of both, comes off worse because his character is a lecturer on climate change who harangues anyone who will listen about impending doom. Lucky for him, he has at least one or two nice, rather natural moments with Moore. Expositional, yes, but there is an easier flow between the two of them. Alessandro Nivola, as a policeman who interviews Ingrid, has the advantage of generating conflict that makes his scene move more quickly.
Eduard Grau’s cinematography is a plus because the setting outside Woodstock, N.Y., is gorgeous and looks like a picture postcard. The same is true for the exquisite wood and glass modern house that Martha has chosen as her shroud. Lying on the primary-colored chaise lounges overlooking an infinity pool gives you something to envy. Costume Designer Bina Daigeler knew just how to take advantage of Tilda Swinton’s innumerable angles, swathing her in colorful knits and asymmetrical designs. Moore, whose attire is commonplace, cannot compete with the elegance of Swinton, nor was she meant to.
It is inconceivable that this film was the Golden Lion winner at the Venice Film Festival. Maybe the subtitles in Italian were better than the actual dialogue in English. If you are a fan of his films or these two great actresses, this might work for you. For me, “The Room Next Door” didn’t resonate from the very beginning. I had originally planned on all sorts of clever ways to let you understand how painful it was to watch this film. Instead, I’ll state merely that if you enjoy watching paint dry, even if Swinton and Moore are the painters, then this is the movie for you.
Now playing at the Laemmle Royal and the AMC at The Grove.
Neely Swanson spent most of her professional career in the television industry, almost all of it working for David E. Kelley. In her last full-time position as Executive Vice President of Development, she reviewed writer submissions and targeted content for adaptation. As she has often said, she did book reports for a living. For several years she was a freelance writer for “Written By,” the magazine of the WGA West, and was adjunct faculty at USC in the writing division of the School of Cinematic Arts. Neely has been writing film and television reviews for the “Easy Reader” for more than 10 years. Her past reviews can be read on Rotten Tomatoes where she is a tomato-approved critic.
