Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 107 minutes
Release Date: October 18th, 2024 (Spain) / December 20th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Warner Bros. / Sony Pictures Classics
Director(s): Pedro Almodóvar
Writer(s): Pedro Almodóvar / Sigrid Nunez (novel What Are You Going Through)

There are lots of ways to live inside a tragedy.

For an artist who creates such emotionally resonate films, something about Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door felt cold and sterile. Stilted cuts. Exposition-heavy dialogue. Very “tell” rather than “show.”

It’s as though he took an Ingrid novel and put it through the lens of a Martha article. The latter’s war correspondent talks about removing emotion to speak truth whereas the former embraces her autofiction’s inherent room to improvise and embellish for the same goal. This type of farewell euthanasia drama generally demands that type of spontaneity, so having it told so clinically proves difficult to ignore.

Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton have some really nice moments trying to break through that wall (mostly when tears fall, but also a great scene of Moore “hugging” in the gym), but the preachy-ness of its messaging (although John Turturro’s diatribe about hopelessness in the face of climate disaster is entertaining) seems to always win out.

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Tilda Swinton as Martha, Julianne Moore as Ingrid in THE ROOM NEXT DOOR; Image: Iglesias Más. © El Deseo. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.