The three mentioned films function as a mirror in which the characters of Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore look at each other with the same gesture and identical desperation with which any viewer could contemplate the film itself, The Room Next Door. Mirror upon mirror. Cinema appears within cinema this time not as a metaphor or symbol of anything, which perhaps it is too, but it is simply in the act of watching together, side by side, a film that cinema acquires its true meaning, which is nothing other than the very essence of time, life, and of course, death. And it is precisely that strange and captivating sensation of recognition and loss, of contemplating oneself in company (they, the characters, and we, the viewers) on the brink of all abysses, that shapes, organizes, and defines The Room Next Door. What emerges on the screen is a calculated, profound, and cold marvel where, indeed, it snows. It snows on the living and it snows on the dead.
About Sigrid Nunez's novel What Are You Going Through, Pedro Almodóvar creates what could be defined as a story, not necessarily melodrama, about friendship. A woman (Tilda Swinton) dies from cancer and asks an old friend (Julianne Moore) to accompany her in the decisive moment of a death she has chosen to take ownership of. It speaks of euthanasia and loneliness, but above all, it speaks of the impossible task of feeling the pain of others; of that moment of gratitude and desperation at the same time when the world fades away under, perhaps, the snow. And it snows, of course. It snows on the living and it snows on the dead.
The Room Next Door does not adhere to rules or patterns. Its consciously fragmented structure reconstructs the life of Swinton's character (a former war reporter) with a series of time jumps that place (and displace) the viewer in front of the landscape of a life lived to the last breath. And so it goes until manners are tempered, and the camera almost exclusively focuses on the faces of the protagonists. And there it stays to live. These are faces exposed in raw flesh that flood the screen down to the last pore and speak, they speak from the awareness of the impending pain, from the memory of resentment towards a daughter who was not loved, from the joy of gratitude for closeness, and most importantly, from the recognition of agony in a world that is agonizing. There is no other landscape than the vastness of a close-up very close to infinity. It is cinema that looks at us from the clarity of words; it is cinema that listens to us from the silent music of a tremendously precise Alberto Iglesias, moving in every silence. It is then that The Room Next Door grows immeasurably to become a major work as intimate as it is wildly political; as contained in each of its gestures as it is exuberant and baroque at its core. It snows, but inside.
In its own way, the 23rd film in Almodóvar's filmography, which is also his first feature film shot in English, is a dedicated declaration of love (and principles) to art in general and to cinema itself in particular. And even to life. The Room Next Door is meant to be contemplated as Swinton and Moore watch films together that speak of love, life, and death; films that speak of them; films that speak of films; films that, far from simply telling stories, tell us. And that act of recognition, as we said, seems as personal as it is shared, as endearing and untransferable as it is social, for everyone. "Her soul was slowly fading away as she listened to the sound of snow falling lightly on the universe and, like the final descent that awaits us all, lightly falling on the living and the dead," reads in Dubliners. And it snows, of course.
Director: Pedro Almodóvar. Cast: Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore, John Turturro, Alessandro Nivola, Juan Diego Botto. Duration: 106 minutes. Nationality: Spain.