The Room Next Door
Pedro Almodóvar – writer / director
Sigrid Nunez – writer
Release date – October 18, 2024
Run time – 107 minutes
When we have reached a certain age, we can find that we easily pick up where we left off with friends we knew well, for a short time, a long time ago. The language is familiar, the allusions are comfortable, the defenses are down, and the shared history extends the trust that has always existed. What wouldn’t we do still for these friends? Pedro Almodóvar’s movie, The Room Next Door, asks this question.
Ingrid (played by Julianne Moore) finds out that her good friend from long ago has terminal cancer. Martha (played by Tilda Swinton) still lives near enough that Ingrid can visit her in short order, and she does. For Martha, Ingrid’s visit is welcome and well-timed; she is looking for someone to accompany her on her journey to her last breath. The plan is set. On the day that seems right to her, Martha will ingest a drug that will release her from a cancerous life promising more suffering. She asks Ingrid to be the one accompanying her, and only asks that she be in the room next door. Ingrid agrees.
They decamp to a place in the hills Martha rents. Ingrid takes a room downstairs instead of the room next to Martha’s, perhaps as the first visible sign of some pressure on the relationship and the idea. While many days pass when Martha is not ready, Ingrid does what she can to put Martha and herself at ease by maintaining some activities of daily living. They respond to each other as close friends do. Nevertheless, tensions threaten the facade of normality. Ingrid seeks activities away from the house, further yet from the room next door, and a friend warns about dangers she could encounter from her involvement in Martha’s death. The way they talk and respond to each other gets more stilted and wary up to the day Martha finally takes the pill, a day Ingrid is not in the room next door, or in the room downstairs, or in the house.
That’s not the end, though. Ingrid returns not long after Martha dies, spends time with and offers succor to her daughter, and then defends Martha and herself to the police at great risk. The answer to Almodóvar’s question could be that these reconstituted relationships can endure, however bumpy and sad they may become along the way.
Edited by Lucy Bruell
Title image credit:
Rosenthal, James W., creator, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
