The Room Next Door
“The Room Next Door portrays disability with sensitivity and respect, never turning illness into a spectacle.”
Title: The Room Next Door (2024)
Director: Pedro Almodóvar 👱🏻♂️🇪🇸🌈
Writers: Screenplay by Pedro Almodóvar 👱🏻♂️🇪🇸🌈 based on the novel by Sigrid Nunez 👩🏻🇺🇸
Reviewed by Weiting 👩🏻🇨🇳🇺🇸
Technical: 4/5
Fresh off its Golden Lion win at this year’s Venice Film Festival, Pedro Almodóvar's The Room Next Door continued its prestigious run as part of New York Film Festival's Centerpiece selection. Known as the Spanish director’s first English-language feature, this boutique melodrama encapsulates Almodóvar's lifelong contemplation on pain and empathy.
Set in New York City, war reporter Martha (Tilda Swinton) and her estranged friend and novelist Ingrid (Julianne Moore) reunite in the former's hospital room. As Martha battles late-stage cervical cancer, Ingrid tries her best to support her. But after a series of failed treatments, Martha asks Ingrid to keep her company in a villa upstate—where she'll take euthanasia pills to end her life.
Swinton and Moore deliver sincere and introspective performances as two women who gradually build up a sanctuary. Compared to the director’s 2019 film Pain and Glory, which focuses on the darker side of ailing, Martha and Ingrid instead find light by overcoming their fear of death together. Simpler and breathier, The Room Next Door seems to reflect the auteur's willingness to let go of his former ruminations on suffering.
The film's bright colors and clever framing are pleasantly and quintessentially Almodóvar, recalling his 1988 black comedy, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Combined with a contemporary setting and modern architecture, The Room Next Door demonstrates the director’s neverending growth at 75 years old, not only as a filmmaker, but a person who still has so much love for humanity despite our many imperfections.
Gender: 5/5
Does It Pass the Bechdel Test? YES
Adapted from the 2020 novel What Are You Going Through by female author Sigrid Nunez, The Room Next Door stays true to the source material by celebrating Martha's agency over her own body and destiny. In addition, Ingrid's support showcases the beauty of female friendships through their innate, deep understanding of each other.
Thanks to their rock-solid chemistry, the film continues a lineage of memorable female duos as seen in the daring Thelma and Louise (1991), the electrifying Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997), and many others. But sharing more than just hijinks and adventure, Martha and Ingrid add to that feminist repertoire by sharing intellectual stimulation. At the core of their relationship resides an organic respect for each other as women of ambition and substance. Even when struggling with her terminal illness, Martha never stops looking for that mental rush of working on an exciting project. In a sense, she leaves behind one last legacy by becoming the co-author of Ingrid's next novel.
Race: 1.25/5
Though author Nunez’s father is half-Chinese and half-Panamanian, Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door has an all-white cast. Granted, the cast is small: Outside of the intimate one-on-ones between main characters Martha and Ingrid, viewers only glimpse broader social scenes made up of established journalists and writers. But considering the story's setting in New York City, it’s hard to believe that even elite parties aren’t host to a few guests of color, tokenized as they may be. While Almodóvar’s filmography constantly explores femininity, sexuality, and gender identities, race has rarely seemed to pique his interest. It's no surprise—but still disappointing—that this film is no different.
Bonus for Age: +1.00
The film’s exploration of age focuses on the emotional and psychological impacts of growing older. Martha and Ingrid, played by Swinton and Moore (both 63 years old at the time of this review), grapple with their pasts: Ingrid, as a writer reflecting on her life’s work and relationships, and Martha, as someone nearing the end of her life who regrets not taking better care of her daughter.
As they confront the finality of Martha’s condition, their connection deepens through their accumulated wisdom and shared history. Age brings them to a crossroad, where they must reckon with the outcomes of their life choices, their identities, and what their futures hold.
Bonus for Disability: +0.75
Martha's advanced cancer and the excruciating treatments she endures leave her lethargic, bedridden, and severely underweight. Her painful laments about not being able to write anymore supports the film’s investigations into mortality and control over one’s own body.
The writing portrays this disability with sensitivity and respect, never turning her illness into a spectacle. Martha maintains her dignity, mental clarity, and strength, even as her body fails her. Fundamentally, her disability is not shown as a weakness, but as an inevitable aspect of her personhood that she confronts with grace.
Bonus for LGBTQ: +0.25
Almodóvar, who’s openly gay, includes a flashback where Martha's male colleague has a brief yet tender romantic moment with a local man in a war zone. He then explains to Martha that the man would have sex with him to evade darkness, which compels her to write about their romance.
Mediaversity Grade: B 4.08/5
While The Room Next Door's small cast prevents a breadth of diverse characters, Almodóvar hyperfocuses on two complex women in their 60s, a demographic that’s largely shunned in mainstream movies and TV. Through Swinton's affecting depiction of an aging woman disabled by cancer, the film champions love, liberation, and bodily autonomy in an otherwise apathetic world.
Like The Room Next Door? Try these other titles starring Tilda Swinton.
The Eternal Daughter (2022)
Problemista (2023)
Okja (2017)