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People grow old and the planet continues to get warmer. These are undeniable truths. But through all this unrelenting change, Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar stays the same.

“The Room Next Door,” Almodóvar’s latest film, doesn’t expand on his style, but instead rehashes it. The movie stars Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton as old friends reuniting in the face of a terminal cancer diagnosis. It features many of the Almodóvar tropes — female leads, bold colors and plenty of camp — to tell a flat story about life and death in a chaotic period of human history.

Neither of the main characters – the terminally ill Martha (Swinton) and successful author Ingrid (Moore) – give the audience a reason to connect or care. The campy style and remarkably over-the-top dialogue provide a comedic and entertaining experience, but there’s a shallow thematic center.

When Ingrid first visits Martha in the hospital, the two immediately return to reminiscing about their days as journalists and their times in the New York nightlife. It’s almost like the past 20 years, in which Ingrid spent most of her time in Europe publishing successful books, never happened. But Almodóvar takes it a step further when the two main characters reveal some of their deepest secrets.

The film’s hyperspeed jump from strangers to friends feels purposely ridiculous. Initially, there’s awkwardness as the pair haven’t seen each other in years, but by the next scene, it’s like they haven’t missed a beat. At times, “The Room Next Door” feels like a playful jab at journalists, as the two writers seem to overshare everything as they remind each other of their writing exploits.

Martha makes it clear that she wants to re-establish a connection with Ingrid because she’s running out of time. Their conversations focus on the past, present and future. Nothing is off the table, including Martha’s daughter and her search for her father. This new dynamic between the two old friends is only enhanced by their shared relationship with Damian (John Turturro), who they both once dated.

Damian – who longs for the days when he was more active and alive, in his words – constantly espouses a nihilistic mindset. He lectures Ingrid about how climate change will kill everyone, and his blunt assessment of the world’s problems comes off as purposely annoying and parodically obvious.

Having a middle-aged man talk down to a middle-aged woman who’s caring for her ailing friend about the pitfalls of society feels ripe for irony. But as Martha and Ingrid reflect on their lives and how the earth is in trouble, it’s increasingly hard to connect to them because of this non-stop, forward-facing dialogue.

Viewer mileage may vary, based on how well you can relate to older characters who need to speak their mind because there’s just no time left. But the overreliance on explaining everything doesn’t offer any additional insight into the characters.

Other 2024 movies also used over-the-top and on the nose dialogue to convey their larger thematic points. Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis,” for one, has dialogue that’s absolutely devoid of subtext. But, while the screenwriting in Coppola’s film points to its fever-dream-like quality, “The Room Next Door” doesn’t have enough careful gestures toward a larger theme aside from facing death.

On top of that, the upper-middle-class setting betrays the larger point about accepting death. Even as Martha defiantly accepts death rather than fighting her cancer, the high-rise apartments and upstate getaway cottages hint that this wildly successful author has the economic ability to end her life comfortably.

That’s not to say Martha’s stance opposing the “fight against cancer” slogan isn’t powerful. It certainly is. But even films like 2020’s “Soul” show how a character, who has struggled both personally and professionally throughout life, can healthily accept death and love themselves.

For all of its campy dialogue and flashback sequences that feel so comically far from the main plot, “The Room Next Door” still has a level of seriousness and self-import to it. Almodóvar has always been known for his sympathetic portrayals of women, so there’s a clear effort to earnestly understand women in middle age, especially since Almodóvar himself is in his mid-70s.

Still, this movie lacks true empathy and genuine examination of how accomplished women approach death in a changing world. Both Moore and Swinton, with over three decades of remarkable work each, bring their own authentic personalities to their roles. The problem lies in the story and the dialogue itself, as “The Room Next Door” seems uninterested in a person’s actual relationship to the idea of life on the other side.

Published on January 19, 2025 at 9:33 pm

Contact Henry: henrywobrien1123@gmail.com