Talents squandered: Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton. Photo / supplied
Talents squandered: Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton. Photo / supplied
Julianne Moore! Tilda Swinton! The Spanish film-maker famed for his women’s pictures directing his first English language feature!
Yet, clearly, the Venice Film Festival got giddy on too much prosecco when it awarded Almodovar its top prize, the Golden Lion. Because despite these strong elements, which usually guarantee a greatarthouse movie, The Room Next Door is a dreadful film, over-expository and annoyingly acted, with a message about dying that leaves you utterly unmoved.
Moore plays Ingrid Parker, a successful New York author whose fear of death is clumsily established at a book signing in the opening scene. A chance reunion with an old pal alerts Ingrid to the failing health of a former acquaintance, and she promptly races to the hospital bedside of Swinton’s inexplicably alone Martha – a former war correspondent who is estranged from her daughter.
Moore turns in a typically lovely but all-too-familiar performance as Ingrid’s softly-spoken empath and Swinton’s usually sharp edges are thankfully blunted by the cancer that is subduing her self-involved sufferer. The women chat about old times (this is where the play-like script is most banal, with its bland flashbacks and overnarrated back stories) until eventually Martha makes Ingrid an offer/request that is hard for her to refuse.
What is no doubt meant as a meditation on the profundity of ceasing to exist instead feels irritatingly ham-fisted. An incongruous soundtrack pounds away incessantly while good actors perform bad dialogue like they’re in an off-Broadway play. John Turturro is fine as both women’s former lover, but his mild-mannered Damien feels like a Woody Allen character introduced solely to mansplain essential legal advice.
Meanwhile, the supporting cast includes a hunky personal trainer who dishes out cod-philosophy and hugs, and an aggressively Fargo-esque policeman.
Lacking the flair of Almodovar’s largely affecting body of work and, let’s be honest, the endearing fire of his regular muses like Penelope Cruz and Rossy de Palma, it’s not his transition to English that is at fault here. The Room Next Door is simply not worth visiting.
The Room Next Door, directed by Pedro Almodovar, is in cinemas now.
