The Room Next Door

The writer Ingrid runs into Martha, a colleague from years ago. Martha's cancer is terminal. She says she has obtained the pills to end her life and asks Ingrid for one thing: to be in the next room, at the house she has rented in Woodstock, when the day comes. That is how the bond is built, with flashbacks to Martha's past with a Vietnam veteran and to her estranged daughter. Pedro Almodovar directed; it is his first feature entirely in English. The source is Sigrid Nunez's 2020 novel. Tilda Swinton plays Martha and Julianne Moore plays Ingrid. It won the Golden Lion at Venice in September 2024, the first Spanish film to take it. At the 39th Goya Awards it won three prizes: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Original Score. The reception split. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 81 percent from 190 reviews and Metacritic at 70 from 45. Stephanie Zacharek in Time wrote that it is possible to make a joyful film about death. Robbie Collin in the Daily Telegraph called it depressingly thin. Who it is for: viewers interested in the right to choose one's death and in watching two actors work opposite each other. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the warmth of Almodovar's Spanish films. The English dialogue at times sounds like the book being read aloud, and most of the criticism lands exactly there.