Not even Swinton and Moore can fill empty ‘Room’
If in an alternate reality Jack Kevorkian had directed the movie “Beaches,” it might have looked a lot like “The Room Next Door,” Pedro Almodóvar’s grandiose weeper about friends and euthanasia. It’s the Spanish auteur’s first English-language endeavor, and it shows – painfully.
In adapting Sigrid Nunez’s novel, “What Are You Going Through,” Almodóvar seeks to impart profundity regarding death and dying but his approach consistently comes across as melodramatic. Consequently, his two Oscar-winning stars, Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, are left drowning in a pool of pretentiousness. What’s intended to have us reaching for the Kleenex, is more likely to inspire eye rolls, if not irritation.
In Almodóvar’s world, cancer never looked so glamorous, awash with wealth, well-appointed surroundings and the luxury of departing this earth sporting designer duds and Cartier Red lipstick. It’s death at its most stylish, capable of approximating an Edward Hopper painting. But it’s also as murky and shallow as the Los Angeles River, with dialogue almost as stilted as the performances by its two highfalutin stars. They leave you wondering if it’s actually Swinton and Moore or A.I. doppelgangers.
Evidence points to the latter. Would an actress of Moore’s caliber agree to her character spontaneously confiding the following to the hunky fitness instructor she just met? “When the body is in great shape, it takes longer to die,” she asserts, adding, “When death comes, the mind wants to go, but the body keeps fighting. The heart is beating ‘no.’” Like us, the trainer (Alvise Rigo) can only respond with a perplexed “Wow!”
“I wish I could give you a hug,” he adds, “but I’m not allowed to touch clients anymore because of lawsuits.” It’s around the time of that inane utterance that you’re tempted to wonder if Almodóvar is resorting to camp. Clunky doesn’t begin to describe this sappy mess.
It starts promisingly enough, when Moore’s Ingrid, a successful novelist who draws inspiration from her fear of death, is greeted by an old friend (Sarah Demeestere) from Boston during a Manhattan book signing. They share a hug and talk soon turns to their mutual gal pal, Martha (Swinton), a war photographer who used to work with Ingrid at a New York magazine. Told that Martha is in a nearby hospital battling Stage 3 cervical cancer, Ingrid rushes to the side of her former colleague, even though they haven’t spoken in years.
Within minutes, it’s just like old times. And the bond only grows stronger as Martha regales Ingrid with her life story, which includes an estrangement from her daughter, Michelle (also Swinton), and a brief romance with Fred (Alex Høgh Anderson), a Vietnam vet suffering from PTSD. Partly out of sympathy, a teenage Martha (Esther McGregor, daughter of Ewan) slept with Fred. Just once, mind you, but enough to improbably end up pregnant with Michelle, who to this day resents being raised without a dad. Martha acknowledges her daughter’s pain and confesses that her inability to nurture Michelle, now a successful music agent, led to their alienation.
The accompanying flashbacks to Martha’s youth feel shoehorned in and unnecessary, disrupting the film’s natural flow. And do we really need to revisit Fred fatally charging into a burning home in the middle of the prairie in response to imagined screams? It serves no purpose other than to satisfy the director’s penchant for the mawkish. You can never have enough sentimentality in an Almodóvar picture. Normally, I enjoy that aspect of his movies, but not here. For various reasons, this time it seems like a desperate attempt to create drama where there is none.
But Almodóvar is just getting started. After a brief remission, Martha phones Ingrid requesting a favor. It seems the cancer has returned and will kill her within a year. Unwilling to allow nature to take its course, Martha seeks to hasten her demise by popping a suicide pill she purchased on the dark web. To that end, she wants Ingrid to be with her at the self-appointed time … in the next room, as the title indicates.
That “room” won’t be in Martha’s opulent Manhattan apartment, but in a Vrbo straight out of Architectural Digest, near Woodstock, N.Y. And by the time they – and inexplicably their shared old flame Damian (John Turturro) – get to Woodstock, we’re in full-blown existentialism as Ingrid and Martha trade bromides on death and dying to the point we and Ingrid cry out, “No more!” And why does Ingrid even need to be there when the agreed-upon plan is for Martha to retreat to her room, swallow the pill and die in solitude? I guess it’s because Martha needs a sounding board for the prattle Almodóvar calls upon her to recite somber faced.
It’s silly, not to mention prolonged. Worse, there’s nothing revelatory or thought-provoking here about the right-to-die debate. Almodóvar just injects pomposity into the moral arguments. We’re neither moved nor inspired. You’re much more intrigued by why actresses as savvy as Swinton and Moore got involved in a movie about death that offers so little to die for.
Movie review
The Room Next Door
Rated: PG-13 for thematic content, strong language and some sexual references
Cast: Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, John Turturro and Alessandro Nivola
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Writer: Pedro Almodóvar
Runtime: 107 minutes
Where: In theaters Jan. 10
Grade: C
