MOVIE GUIDE: THE ROOM NEXT DOOR (2024)
Ingrid and Martha were once close friends.
Time and professional attachments took them apart to suddenly meet again years later under some devastating news. That’s the simple premise from Pedro Almodovar’s first English speaking film, a delicate one, a somber one. A visually stunningly one.
If there’s a constant in almost all Almodovar films, it’s his great sense of aesthetics, the way he plays his characters with colors and acute, perfect framing. The way colors interact with his stories, from pointing out heavy dramas to provoking some laughs from his dark sense of humor. Here with “The Room Next Door” he concentrates all those years of amazing visuals on the two main characters, Ingrid played by Julianne Moore and Martha played by Tilda Swinton and what a feast we have, not only because we’re witnessing a masterful tete-a-tete between two naturally gifted actresses but also by the way Almodovar and his DP Eduard Grau engage them with vibrant colors almost mimicking, contrasting and sometimes matching Moore’s natural red with Swinton’s bright white and yellow tones.
Yes, in the end this is a heavy drama like the ones the Spanish director uses to bring from time to time, maybe flawed but so visually impressive that softens and elevates our soul when facing the unthinkable.
“…We must never return to the places where we were truly happy because we ruin the good memories of the first time…”
available on netflix
