“People want you to keep fighting,” Martha (Tilda Swinton) explains to Ingrid (Julianne Moore) as she reflects on her terminal cancer diagnosis. “If you win, you’re heroic, and if you lose…well, maybe you just didn’t fight hard enough.” The rhetoric around terminal illness is a source of much frustration for the war reporter, recently reunited with her novelist friend after falling out of touch; perhaps being surrounded by so much death, she’s come to accept that there are some battles that can’t be won – only endured.
Ingrid, who has just written a book about her fear of dying, is somewhat disquieted by her friend’s candour but nevertheless promises to visit Martha while she undergoes experimental treatment, sensing her friend’s loneliness in her time of need. Then, while at New York’s Lincoln Centre to catch a movie, Martha makes a monumental request: she is going to die by euthanasia before her cancer worsens, and she would like Ingrid to be with her when the time comes.
Of course there are classic Almodóvar hallmarks in this stylish drama, from the chic costumes to the gorgeous interiors in central and upstate New York. Working with cinematographer Edu Gray for the first time (who also shot Tom Ford’s A Single Man and more recently Rebecca Hall’s Passing) Almodóvar seems at home in America as in Spain, struck by the beauty of the remote woodland outside of New York City and the peace that Martha seeks within it. At the same time, some of Almodóvar’s eternal interests reappear, such as the relationship between mothers and daughters, sensuality, and the desire to push against the boundaries of what is acceptable in society. Here, notably, it is the topic of assisted suicide – still a taboo or even a crime in many countries – with Almodóvar advocating for the freedom of choice, pointing out that in a world as fucked up as ours, autonomy over our own bodies and desires is just about all we have left.
Although the dialogue is sometimes a little clunky and very exposition-heavy in the film’s first half hour, Swinton and Moore sell it with their usual charm (it’s mostly a two-hander aside from John Turturro’s welcome supporting role as a doom-n-gloom former lover of both Martha and Ingrid’s) and Almodóvar – no stranger to pushing the envelope – finds dark humour in the direness of Martha’s situation. It’s an elegant film, reckoning empathetically with an extremely complex topic, but there’s a slight sense that something is missing, keeping The Room Next Door from ever really becoming truly great.
Perhaps it’s the lack of theatrics compared to Almodóvar’s previous fair, which creates a more subdued atmosphere, or the decision to front-load the film with flashbacks instead of teasing out the mystery of Martha’s former lives as a reporter and a mother across the runtime. Hell, maybe it’s just the pervasive heterosexuality of it all (minor flashback involving an war photographer friend of Martha’s notwithstanding) but The Room Next Door does feel slightly underwhelming, given the amount of talent behind and in front of the camera. In the pantheon of films about terminal illness, it’s refreshing to find one that takes such a humane approach to the subject of assisted suicide, focusing on personal agency but also the emotional toll for those around the patient. One can’t help wishing it was just a little bit more.
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