It is with a film which directly contemplates mortality that, at 75 years old, Pedro Almodóvar was awarded a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in September. It was also with his first feature film in English that the Spanish director finally won an award. Already released in Spain and the United States, The Room Next Door arrives in France this January 8. But it divides the press in the United States, where the plot of the film takes place, as well as in Spain, the filmmaker’s country.
We follow Tilda Swinton in the shoes of Martha, a former war reporter for The New York Times, suffering from terminal cancer. Julianne Moore is Ingrid, a successful writer who returns to settle in New York after years in Paris. The two friends reconnect after a long period of not seeing each other. The second will then accompany the first in her last moments, and in her decision to kill herself without waiting for the cancer to kill her. The questioning of euthanasia and the right to a dignified death also mixes with other current debates, such as climate change.
Timeless or artificial?
This kind of reflection on mortality is often the prerogative of artists with long and successful careers, like Almodóvar,
