“It fell on the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, fell softly on the bog of Allen and further, to the west, fell softly on the rebellious and dark waves of the Shannon. It also fell in every corner of the isolated cemetery, on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It had gathered on the twisted crosses and tombstones, on the spearheads of the little gate, on the stripped brushwood. His soul was fading little by little as he heard the snow faintly spreading over the entire universe as at the coming of the last hour on all the living and the dead.
The snowfall at the end of the last of the short stories that make up People of Dublin by James Joyce is one of the most beautiful things ever written, one of the sweetest, most just and saddest. One of the most human. The same is true of the final scene of People of DublinJohn Huston’s latest film, faithfully adapted from the book, and where these words resonate.
They resonate again in Pedro Almodóvar’s twenty-third feature film. And it suddenly seems obvious, which has nothing to do with a quote or a cultural reference. It is as if what was most precious, but quite underground, and which ran beneath the provocative appearances of the work of the filmmaker of All about my mother and of Talk to herfound the perfection of his expression.
Marta, a great war reporter, will die of cancer. At her request, she is accompanied until the end, the moment of which she will choose, by her lifelong friend, the successful writer Ingrid.
That, in order to tell the story of this journey of the two women with such keen and delicate precision, Almodóvar had to leave Spain suggests how his well-deserved position as the greatest active Spanish filmmaker, associated with certain themes and certain styles, could have become a burden, the weight of which was borne out by his most recent films.
Except this little marvel, which appears as the prelude to the great accomplishment that is The Room Next Door: the short film after The human voice by Jean Cocteau, which marked the meeting between the filmmaker and Tilda Swinton, a genius actress. Thanks to her, it’s as if Almodóvar could completely remain himself while escaping what corseted him.
The new feature film, spoken in English, set in New York State, is entirely a film by its author. The use of colors and decorations, architectures and objects, is part of this expressive visual vocabulary which characterizes it, just like the music ofAlberto Iglesias.
But these elements are as if freed from the insistent signature effects, thanks also to the landscapes – countryside or city – of the United States and to the “Americanness” of Julianne Moore, her inscription in a culture as obvious as Tilda Swinton is assignable to no belonging.
Edward Hopper undoubtedly, and Pedro Almodóvar certainly, but first and foremost the precise accuracy of the shapes and colors in phase with a situation of love, suffering and peace, life and death, life with death . | Pathé Films
Freed from signature effects
It goes without saying that the immense talent of the actresses, the one who plays the woman who is about to die and who speaks, and the one who plays the woman who will accompany her and who listens, is an essential dimension of this film-sonata for two virtuoso instruments, where the silences are as musical, and rich in meaning, as the words.
Thus, constantly inventing and reinventing, sequence after sequence, the improbable points of convergence between reflection on the freedom to die, loyalty to one’s youth, relationship to writing, female friendship, sense of transmission between generations, The Room Next Door unfolds like a song that is all the more expansive as it appears minimalist.
Tilda Swinton, genius actress. | Pathé Films
Evoking without insisting real situations, from that of the English artist Dora Carrington (to which it is said that Ingrid devoted a book) with Lytton Strachey until the relationship between Susan
Sontag and Annie Leibovitz, but without an effective couple link, the film welcomes step by step a plurality of questions, tensions, debates.
The multiple forms of social and moral pressure concerning the right to choose one’s death come to the surface, including in the form of a micro-thriller with a Machiavellian investigator, as does the question of relationships with loved ones at a time of decisive choices. And what is involved in deciding, with or without others.
Because there were the two large apartments, one for each, in New York, then the architect’s house in the forest, near Woodstock, where they moved in together, until Marta decided when she would close the door. But there are people, too.
There is Damian, who was the lover of both of them and remains their friend, and there is the girl, angry at the life her mother had chosen and who will have to deal with her dead. There is, very present, the planet ravaged by wars, greed and environmental destruction.
Much of the underlying strength of the film lies in this articulation of the duo’s intimacy, the metaphysical horizon (life, death, choice, freedom, etc.), and the presence of a space-time current, populated, dotted with everyday life.
Three in the image, with the voice of Marta, while more than one game is played between Damian (John Turturro) and Ingrid. | Pathé Films
Mobilizing an art of storytelling that provides its share of twists and turns and the unexpected, but maintains the tone of attention to what matters rather than what fascinates, screenwriter Almodóvar, relying very directly on a novel by the American writer Sigrid Nunezserves filmmaker Almodóvar impeccably.
The simple and beautiful miracle of the film will be that this meditation around death will be incredibly luminous, vibrant, open to what animates the bodies and minds of beings in this world – and not just those of humans.
No one knows if the title of the short story which closes Joyce’s collection, The Dead, should translate to “Le Mort” or “Les Morts”. But if, in the East Coast countryside filmed by Pedro Almodóvar, the snow will fall again, the title which could be “La Morte” also deserves to be “La Vie”.
The Room Next Door
by Pedro Almodóvar
avec Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore, John Turturro, Alessandro Nivola
Duration: 1h47
Released January 8, 2025
Source: www.slate.fr
