It’s always fascinating to see a master filmmaker work in a different language, especially when their work is singular. Tone, personality, and rhythm can come across very differently, and sometimes be difficult to recreate, in a new cultural context. Some take to it right away, others require time to find their footing. Pedro Almodóvar’s first feature-length film in English, The Room Next Door , is somewhere in between. The Spanish director’s fingerprint is there, undoubtedly. But the movie feels strangely incomplete, as if made with one hand tied behind his back.

Adapted from What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez by Almodóvar himself, the film centers on two old friends who find themselves in each other’s orbit again when one, Ingrid (Julianne Moore), learns that the other, Martha (Tilda Swinton), is battling cancer. She’s losing that battle, and the former war correspondent has decided to fight on her terms. She informs Ingrid one day that she’s ready to die. She’s purchased a euthanasia pill off the dark web, and while she’s not afraid of death, she doesn’t want to face it alone.

Martha asks Ingrid to take a trip with her. She has a few good days left, before her condition worsens, and they can enjoy them together. But one day, without advance warning, Ingrid will wake up and Martha will be dead. She doesn’t need her friend to be there when it happens, but it would comfort her to have someone who loves her in the room next door.

The Room Next Door Has Many Ideas, But Doesn’t Fully Develop Them
The English-Language Dialogue Is A Factor

It’s a compelling premise, especially given that Ingrid, an author, has just written a book about how terrified she is of death. She agrees nonetheless to be there for her friend. They talk a great deal: about Martha’s time covering wars, about her quality of life now, about her relationship with her estranged daughter. Martha’s pleased about her impending end and brings that up, too, but Ingrid, flustered, always asks not to talk about that now. As if there will be another time.

The Room Next Door
is first and foremost exploring euthanasia, and Almodóvar is grappling with his feelings on someone deciding to end their life.

Visually and thematically, The Room Next Door is all Almodóvar. His strong use of color is everywhere, as are flowers, which become a poignant motif. They decorate the walls of Martha’s hospital when Ingrid first visits, and Martha’s apartment has a striking painting of flowers in a vase, perhaps beginning to wilt. As a symbol, they speak to temporary flourishing and a death to come, but those with their stems cut are much like Martha: already terminal. Ideas flow through the visual style in this film, as they always do.

But in dialogue, they struggle to find purchase. Everyone speaks with a rhythm that initially struck me as unnatural, and I bumped on it repeatedly. In one tragic flashback, staged with his trademark melodrama, my inclination was to chuckle. This faded with time, and once Martha and Ingrid arrived at their beautiful getaway, I was fully immersed. But it’s the development of themes, too, not just their expression. Certain thoughts are juxtaposed, but not fully synthesized.

You Can Feel Almodóvar Thinking Through Euthanasia
But The Interesting Pieces Don’t Form A Full Picture

The Room Next Door is first and foremost exploring euthanasia, and Almodóvar is grappling with his feelings on someone deciding to end their life. Suffering is where he comes through most clearly. Over time, Martha emphasizes not just the physical pain she’s experiencing, but the erosion of pleasures. The adrenaline rush of war zones and the sexual flings that accompanied covering them are long behind her, but the effects of chemo have also taken her ability to pay attention. The joys of writing, reading, and music are closed to her now.

For anyone who has seen his work, it’s not surprising to feel Almodóvar asking what does one live for, without art? His movie is at peace with Martha’s decision. But, in the context of cancer (and life) as a battle, The Room Next Door also doesn’t position her choice as a defeat. John Turturro’s friend of Ingrid and Martha exists to clarify this position; he gives lectures on climate change, and takes a deeply cynical view, no longer hopeful about humanity’s ability to act. He talks about the Earth like a terminal case.

This character introduces an intriguing line of thought, but it could’ve used more room to develop. The comparison between Martha and the planet Earth doesn’t quite hold. But read Turturro’s role as a dialectical one, and you can see Almodóvar working out the boundaries of his philosophy regarding euthanasia. Death is inevitable, but hopelessness is not a valid response to the condition of the world at large, when the possibility for action and enjoyment remains. To make the most of one’s death when life has reached its end is, by contrast, a hopeful act.

There is more to dig into (namely the many artistic references, especially to James Joyce’s The Dead), but perhaps not quite as much as it feels like there should be. Martha’s past, her daughter’s estrangement, Ingrid’s fear – all of these elements should add up to more than they do. There is greatness in The Room Next Door, but it comes in pieces, not a unified whole. It is an interesting film, and well worth seeing, but perhaps not all that was hoped for from Almodóvar’s English-language experiment.

The Room Next Door premiered at the Venice Film Festival. The film is 107 minutes long and not yet rated. It will release in US theaters December 20.