‘The Room Next Door’ Review: She’s Thinking of Ending Things | NYFF

Ten years ago, as I was wrapping up an afternoon shift at my college part-time job, I received a call that made me feel like my entire body sunk into the floor. My mother called to inform me that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time. She didn’t want to wait to tell me in person; with news like this, it was important for her to tell me immediately after she found out. Her voice wasn’t trembling or scared, but rather collected and accepting of the news she was given, knowing full well the journey that she was about to go on again and how she would have to fight to make sure she was around for how she put it, “the important moments in your life.” She may have been thinking about me, my future, and those highlights of life that she couldn’t miss, but I could hear right through the voice on the phone and could tell that she was holding it all together after hearing this shocking news. She’s always been lively, talkative, passionate (if you know me, she is where I get all of these characteristics from), so for her to be stoic was a different experience for me, since I was a young kid when she had her first battle with cancer, and didn’t have much a memory about her condition then. It’s always saddened me to know how alone she was during that first round of cancer, as I spent most of my time with my Dad because she didn’t want me to see her in pain or in a weaker state of what her normal condition was. But there was no hiding it this time, as we both knew she couldn’t face this alone this time, as she was facing a double mastectomy to remove all signs of cancer, and going to be on a long road to recovery.

Two weeks later, she had her surgery early in the morning, with the plan being that she would stay in the hospital to recover and then spend time resting over the next two months at my aunt’s house, since it was close to her doctor’s office. When I arrived that evening to her hospital room, she was laying in the bed, sleeping, but she looked like she had been through hell just to get to this small moment of peace. Her face was thinner, and she looked smaller than how she normally was, like the bed she was laying in was about to swallow her whole as she rested in the middle of it, sleeping the entire time I was there for my visit. It was shocking that just a few days before, she had looked like her normal self, and not even that long enough of time passes and a different shape of the person I love laid before me. These memories circulated in my mind during Pedro Almodóvar’s latest film, The Room Next Door, as Ingrid (Julianne Moore), walks into the hospital room that her old friend Martha (Tilda Swinton), is staying in for her cervical cancer treatment and sees that her old friend, whom she lost connect with for years, looks like a shell of her once lively, younger self.

Ingrid, a renowned nonfiction author, who was once as close with Martha as a sibling, spending the early parts of their career together at a hip, up-and-coming New York magazine. But as things usually happen in life when you are young, talented, and ambitious, they went their separate ways, with Martha becoming a war correspondent and traveling around the world being on the frontlines of dangerous situations, while Ingrid stayed in New York City, building her body of work within safer conditions. It is only at a book signing for Ingrid’s latest work, the subject being about overcoming the fear of death, that she hears about Martha’s condition, from a mutual friend. This springs her to go see Martha, and we get an elegant shot of Swinton’s Martha laying still in her hospital bed, with the door opening to reveal off-camera a connection to the past to help motivate her in the present. Early on in this adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s novel What Are You Going Through, the tempo of the dialogue delivered by the actresses may seem stilted, meaning that there is a possible issue with the translation within Almodóvar’s first attempt at making an English language film, not allowing for these two character’s emotional connection to come together, even within their reunion at the start of the film. But, for me, the rhyme of Ingrid and Martha’s early conversation speaks to the nervousness found within two old friends needing to find their attachment to each other that they once had, as well as the reality of seeing someone in the condition that Martha is in for the first time; which can leave catch you off balance. Sometimes, there is never a right time to reestablish something with someone after a long period of absence, but Ingrid is coming back into Martha’s world right when she needs her, because she is going through her road to recovery alone, as most of Martha’s friends barely visit due to their busy lives. And there’s Martha’s relationship with her estranged daughter Michelle, who is upset with her mother for withholding details about who her father was and the tragedy surrounding his death. Flashback sequences to Martha’s time meeting him in Vietnam during the war are woven together by a house fire and seeing Michelle’s father die due to his complications with PTSD from the war; heightened by the usual brilliant combination of melodrama and tenderness that only Almodóvar can pull off. 

Inside of these early conversations, we get glimpses at the differences, not only in the character’s personalities, but in the choices both Moore and Swinton made in bringing these women to life. For Martha, Swinton is the more talkative, vibrant one of the duo, weaving in stories of her old war correspondence from the war in Afghanistan with questions about Ingrid’s next book, and making the dialogue flow effortlessly on the screen. While she is portraying someone sick, you almost forget about her illness because of the presence Swinton brings to Martha, which is perfectly balanced with the more attentive, gentle work being done by Moore. As Ingrid, we walk into and throughout this story through her eyes, and Moore calmly guilds us through the life of someone is more curious to listen to someone right now rather than injecting themselves into a narrative. Her subtly to Ingrid is matched by Swinton’s sureness to her portrayal of Martha, fully allow the audience the chance to feel the time these two have spent apart, the hard decisions they’ve had to make, and how their paths have merged back together at just the right time for us to see them blossom a once glowing friendship back into full bloom and beyond. It’s riveting work by both actresses from the start.

By the time the two of them catch up, they are as thick as thieves again, talking on the phone daily, with Ingrid visiting Martha almost every day, not out of necessity but out of desire to be with her. But things change when she comes again and finds out from Martha that the treatments aren’t working, that her body is rejecting the chemotherapy. Martha’s mindset quickly changed from someone willing to fight her disease because she’s “not ready to abandon the party,” to someone who believes in their heart that “cancer can’t get me if I get me first.” She goes home, vowing that she doesn’t want to just die in a hospital bed, but instead, end her life on her terms before she ends up “looking like a junkie;” before Ingrid starts to see her friend wilt away before her eyes. As they are about to see a film at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center (the annual location for premiere screenings at the New York Film Festival, which Almodóvar expressed a wink to the festival that has shown him so much love over the years, and in my opinion, a perfect place to reveal the heart of his current cinematic creation), Martha tells Ingrid that she’s bought a pill on the “dark web” (hilariously brought up by Swinton several times in the film), and is going to end her life soon. But while she isn’t afraid of dying, and rather confident in how things will play out, she is uneasy about dying alone, so she asks Ingrid to be her companion to a house she’s rented in Woodstock, two hours outside the city, where the two can live together and live out Martha’s remaining days. “Don’t you want someone closer?” is the immediate response from Ingrid, as she is surprised by the invitation and the weight of responsibility it carries. And while Ingrid’s latest book does look into the idea of dealing with death, The Room Next Door shows her that it is one thing to write about it, it is an entirely different beast when confronting it. When Ingrid does come around, and says yes to Martha’s proposition, and the two head on their journey to Woodstock, it is from this moment where the film fully solidifies as a showcase for two of the greatest living actresses on the planet coming together to deliver incredibly layered, deeply familiar performances in another Almodóvar masterpiece.

This trip, though with an ultimate purpose, endpoint for Martha, is explained as a vacation, or a chance for the two friends to share memories with each other like they once did. Given the current political ramifications of aiding in an assisted suicide, Martha lays out all the details for Ingrid to keep her mind at ease, having the confidence in her that she can handle all the details to the authorities when she is gone. The only person who knows the whole situation is Damian (a standard, quality performance from John Turturro), an old boyfriend that dated both women but for whom Ingrid has still kept a relationship with over the years but mostly a friendly, intellectual companionship rather than anything sexual like when they were all young. He’s become a lecturer on climate change, and has become rather pessimistic about the future of the world as our carbon footprint is growing larger and larger by the day. In a scene where the two are having lunch, Almodóvar is able to connect the biggest issue of our lives (the survival or potential death of our planet) with the fascinating situation Ingrid has put herself in with Martha’s future death. It’s an ongoing question that has lingered in my mind over the past twenty years when you see films like Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life or Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, in that how big are our problems when looking at the grander picture of humanity, and with The Room Next Door, Almodóvar comes to the conclusion that human connection, those feelings and moments in your life, are just as meaningful than anything else and have a little more attention to them because you can’t deny personal component attached to them. It’s a hard thread he is weaving here and, unsurprisingly, he weaves it perfectly together.

For the second half of the film, we mostly spend time with Ingrid and Martha as they eat lunch together, tell old stories, go for walks in the woods, lay in the sun napping on the outside deck, go to bookstores, watch old movies till the crack of dawn, even seeing Ingrid go on a solo adventure to the local gym (run by one of the hottest male gym instructors on film in some time, I see you Pedro). They are achieving Martha’s goal, of living life normally with Ingrid staying with her in the room next door (but really downstairs since it was a bigger room) in case she needs something as her medications are slowly starting to taper off, and Martha feels her time is coming to an end. The Almodóvar signature color palette is used so elegantly throughout the film, as bright uses of red are scattered throughout the clothing, lipstick, furniture, but specifically, the door of the room Martha is staying in. Each time we see Moore’s face as Ingrid looks to make sure that door is still open, with it closed signaling to her that Martha is gone, it is as if your heart skips a beat alongside her. When I visited my mother at my aunt’s house, I never once let that door close. Maybe it was paranoia, but just like the relief we see in Ingrid’s face when it is revealed to be open, I didn’t want to think of the unimaginable that could happen to my loved one. And that’s what Martha becomes to Ingrid at one point. She’s not a family member, but she’s not a stranger and their bond is stronger than the average friendship. When Moore’s Ingrid lays beside Swinton’s Martha one night as they go to sleep, it is acknowledgment of deep fondness for making the right decision, and being there for each other at their most vulnerable. No words are spoken, but everything is understood; another profound moment of humanity added to Almodóvar’s body of work.

The beauty of the film’s detailed production design, matched with Moore’s heartbreaking, longing looks at Martha’s red door are blended together perfectly with Alberto Iglesias’ lovely score; one of the best of the year. Not to be unmatched by Moore, Swinton’s work ranks up with some of the best she’s done in her career, providing another fascinating character examination to her unbelievably strong collection of 2024 performances between this, Problemista, and The End. Almodóvar made it clear in the NYFF press conference that he only considered Moore and Swinton for the parts, and given their stellar chemistry throughout the film, he made the right decision (like he always does) in selecting these actresses to play these parts; they are a flawless duo in soulful, sophisticated portrait of how death does not define who we are, but rather the connections and imprint we make to those we love and leave behind.

Grade: A

This review is from the 2024 New York Film Festival. Sony Pictures Classics will release The Room Next Door only in theaters on December 20 in Los Angeles and New York City, expanding to select theaters on December 25 and wider in January 2025.