Even as someone living in a country where consensual assisted dying is legal, I only ever hear about it through the contentiousness around the issue. And there is valid reason for protest and scepticism, especially around its relationship to healthcare resources, but the principle shouldn’t be so controversial. And Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door even dares to suggest it could be profoundly liberating, and strengthen the bond between the living and the dead. A novel, perhaps healthy approach to that most difficult of subjects.
The Room Next Door is Almodóvar’s first English-language feature, though he’s made a couple English short films in the last few years. The source is an American novel, What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez, but I have to imagine the real reason Almodóvar made the film in English was to utilize Tilda Swinton, who starred in his 2020 short The Human Voice, and who was very much an ideal match for this character. Her Martha Hunt is an ex-war correspondent with terminal cervical cancer, who many years prior had worked at a magazine with Julianne Moore’s Ingrid, now an author -where they had been close friends but had fallen out of touch. Upon hearing about Martha’s condition, Ingrid immediately decides to reconnect, though their renewed relationship is put through the ringer when Martha announces her intention to die and her desire that Ingrid help her.
Like most Almodóvar movies, the vibrant and attractive colour stands out first and foremost -particularly the bright reds and blues and greens- perhaps most noticeably here in the context of something seemingly so dark. Martha and Ingrid’s frank discussions about the inevitable and how to prepare, Ingrid especially, for how to deal with the ramifications both emotional and technical, of Martha’s death; it’s all set to a gorgeously warm colour scheme that calms the tension of these heavy points. And Almodóvar applies a similar approach to their dialogue which is mannered and forthright, intelligent, rational, but not unemotional -on Martha’s part most of all, who is emphatically confident over these final choices, yet still critically sentimental and empathetic, though in subtle ways.
And indeed Swinton’s performance of this complex fusion is probably the movie’s most charming feature. There is a terrible weight, palpable on her, all throughout and simultaneously a sense of assured relief. She feels for her own death and the impact it will have on others, but is completely at ease with it for her own sake. It’s an attitude not often portrayed openly, and a maverick actor like Swinton is really the ideal person to go there. You also see too in her tender personality, her exciting stories, and elegant wisdom just why she becomes so important a person to Ingrid even after so long an estrangement. You want to be close to her, to understand and connect with her. Going through that in our stead, Moore handles Ingrid’s love for her friend with the utmost delicacy. She’s the one who must take on the trauma of Martha’s passing, and necessary steps to prevent herself being implicated in it given the illegal nature of what Martha strives to do. Through the pain and even occasional lapses in understanding, she inhabits a strength of sympathy so sweet to take in.
Almodóvar treats us to a few snapshots of Martha's past through the stories she relates -stories that belong to others who crossed paths with her- granting us a glimpse of the scope of her life. Martha is a very literary woman and so it is appropriate how these detours have a character almost akin to James Joyce -who is often referenced in the film, his story “The Dead” being quoted directly. We learn of her partner Fred, who came back from Vietnam traumatized, left before their daughter was born and later perished in a house fire. We learn of Martha's daughter, who from adolescence has been distant from Martha over her desire to find the father she never knew. And then there is the story from her time in Iraq when a Spanish colleague brought her to an ex-lover priest running a mission in war-torn Baghdad and she was tempted to publish a fictitious version of their love story. Each of these anecdotes she shares with Ingrid reveals a little something about her attitude towards mortality and death, so that you're unsurprised when the euthanasia pill comes up afterward. It certainly feels better weaved in than the digressions of Parallel Mothers.
Martha's death will be spontaneous; to assuage Ingrid's mental health and give herself some freedom, she gives Martha no set time except that she will know when the door to her room is left shut. And of course there is a false alarm, and another sequence of Ingrid suggestively questioning if Martha is sure in her decision -contrivances I figured Almodóvar wouldn't resort to. But apart from these, the mood over their friendship, their hikes in the woods, their nights watching movies in these ever uncertain last days, is by no means plaintive. Rather it is wholesome and mature. There's not the underpinning fear of death examined in Almodóvar's Pain and Glory, but it otherwise touches on a lot of similar themes of reconciling one's life before the end. And in addition to the controversial way that death comes about, it ventures a certain warmth and critical bonding in that. If His Three Daughters was about grief's ability to bring a family closer, The Room Next Door is about how it can solidify and deepen a friendship. Before hearing of the cancer, Ingrid and Martha were out-of-touch acquaintances -by Martha's death they are practically sisters.
And Almodóvar appears to be grappling with a larger idea in these musings. In a curious scene late in the film, Ingrid goes to lunch with Damian (John Turturro), a past sexual fling of both women and currently Ingrid's partner. A climate journalist, he goes on a tangent of frustration about the dire future of humanity and the planet that can't help feel connected to Almodóvar's own opinions on the matter. And yet his cynicism is met by Ingrid's insight that in light of the doom, it is our relationships we must put stock in. It would appear to be something she learned from her proximity to Martha, and it comes at just the right time.
Flourish makes a difference. In one gorgeously ambient scene, the two women lay side by side as they watch the rain outside the hospital window -Martha observes that it is pink, and the room is cast in a rosy radiance. It leaves an aftertaste throughout the movie, with reflective moods and compositions up to the ending, which again asks for a leap from the audience, yet one that is surprisingly easy to accept. The film can't help but feel good. The Room Next Door is a touching story on friendship at death, radical enough in that fact without Almodóvar's particular graces and emphatic virtues. It has these in spades though, and as much life as anything he's made.
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