The Venice Film Festival on Saturday awarded its Golden Lion to Spaniard Pedro Almodovar for his first American film, giving him the opportunity to make a plea in favor of assisted suicide, the central theme of “The Room Next Door.”
A feature-length film with a twilight tone, “The Room Next Door” tells the story of Ingrid (Julianne Moore), a novelist anxious about the end of her life, and Martha (Tilda Swinton), her childhood friend, a former war reporter accustomed to defying death, living alone in her beautiful New York apartment and who, suffering from cancer, decides to end her life.
“I believe that saying goodbye to this world properly and with dignity is a fundamental right of every human being,” said the former enfant terrible of the Movida when receiving his award on the stage of the Palazzo del Cinema in Venice’s Lido.
“I know that this right goes against religions or beliefs that have God as the only source of life,” he added, urging “believers of all religions to respect and not interfere in individual decisions on this subject.” “Human beings must be free (…) to die when life is unbearable for them,” he concluded.
At 74, Almodovar, author of masterpieces such as “All About My Mother” and “Talk to Her”, which won Oscars, had never been awarded the top prize at a festival.
It was finally the jury chaired by Isabelle Huppert, another great face of European auteur cinema, who awarded this distinction to the Spaniard, a filmmaker of women and feelings par excellence.
“It’s my first film in English but the spirit is Spanish,” he commented.
A colourful character, still appearing in Venice dressed in a salmon pink suit, Almodovar nonetheless harbors a certain darkness, more marked in recent years.
While her name has long been synonymous with transgression, daring humor, flamboyant melodramas and extraordinary heroines, her works are increasingly tormented by physical decline and the fear of death.
To explain this new seriousness, he often evokes his life as an aging man, reclusive with a cat and “fantasmas” (ghosts or fantasies).
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