Spain/USA • Psychological Drama • Year: 2024 • Running Time: 107 mins
Language: English
Synopsis:
Ingrid and Martha were close friends in their youth, when they worked together at the same magazine. After years of being out of touch, they meet again in an extreme but strangely sweet situation.
As extravagant and engrossing and doggedly mysterious as anything Almodóvar has done recently, with luxuriously self-aware performances from Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, and an undertow of darkness often overlooked by yeasayers and naysayers.
Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian)
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Parallel Mothers (2021) / Pain And Glory (2019) / Julieta (2016)
Writers: Pedro Almodóvar • Sigrid Nunez
Main Cast:
| Julianne Moore | Ingrid |
| Tilda Swinton | Martha |
| John Turturro | Damian |
for full cast list, additional technical information and reviews, please visit the The Room Next Door pages in IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes)
Film Notes:
We have shown practically all Pedro Almodovar’s films, and some he has only produced, over many years. Here is his first English language film, scripted and direct by him from a novel by Sigrid Nunez: What Are You Going Through. Although it won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival in 2024, a few critics were bemused that it should do so. However, Derek Malcolm, in The Guardian, found it “…as extravagant, engrossing and doggedly mysterious as anything [Almodovar] has done recently.”
Here are the Almodovar trade marks: seductively rich blocks of colour with his keynote arterial red; a lush, omnipresent orchestral score and a layered story interspersed with flashbacks and incidental scenes.
Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton give their usual stylish, maybe too stylish, performances as two old friends who come together after many years when one of them, Martha (Swinton), is dying from cancer and wishes to spend a last peaceful weekend in a rented house in the country before ending her life with a special pill. She wants Ingrid (Moore) to be in the next room while she does this, armed with deniability – she can tell the cops (yes, most of the story is set in the USA) she knew nothing of these intentions. Martha is honest with Ingrid in telling her that she had asked others to help her but they had refused. She is less honest, however, about something even more important, despite their closeness, keeping us guessing until the very end.