Pedro Almodóvar is one of the filmmakers who makes you want to be an actress even if you don’t have the slightest talent for it! His way of filming actresses shows so much love, even reverence, that we would like to be in front of his camera like Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton in The Room Next Door. They are simply wonderful in this film which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival last September.
For his first English-language feature film, the director talks about female friendship. A woman who is about to die and another who will support her are the heroines of this work about the end of a life overflowing with vitality in the very heart of agony. “To tell this story, the closest genre would have been melodrama, but I tried to make a film with restraint while avoiding melodrama,” he confides.
Women, women, women
Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore move people to the core. One, suffering from terminal cancer, speaks. The other listens intently. Both confirm that the director has no equal in highlighting women in their strengths but also their weaknesses and their complicity during the decisive moments of their existence. This new female duo joins a beautiful host of stars that the filmmaker has made vibrant and alive whether they are “on the verge of a nervous breakdown” or in “stiletto heels”. Mothers or lovers, they inhabit his filmography with as much charm as personality.
Marisa Paredes, Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Victoria Abril and Rossy de Palma have seen their image enhanced by the filmmaker’s care. “I try to show the best version of the actresses I work with,” he said to 20 Minutes a few years ago. Maybe that’s why they say they like filming with me. They feel the passion that I feel towards them.” This flame burns more than ever in The Room Next Door.
Where are the women?
There he found Tilda Swinton, whom he had already directed in The human voice according to Jean Cocteau and features Julianne Moore for the first time to make them experience together what he calls “a love without the disadvantages of love”. Tracking their every expression, he strips them psychologically and makes them powerfully beautiful at every moment. Especially when the dying woman asks her friend to give her a final proof of attachment, the strongest that can be claimed.
“Directing my performers is a constant joy,” admits the director. There’s something magical about seeing them take on the role, modeling it and finally making it their own.” The alchemy between the two actresses takes the viewer to the heart of the emotion. Their faces leave a lasting impression as if Pedro Almodóvar had captured their essence to restore it to us with intense purity. We leave the room with the impression of having witnessed a small miracle in front of their intertwined performances.
