Pedro Almodóvar can now count Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore among his new cinematic muses.
The Oscar-winning Spanish director’s first English-language feature, “The Room Next Door,” was confirmed Tuesday morning as expected to premiere at the 2024 Venice Film Festival in competition. Timed to artistic director Alberto Barbera’s lineup announcement, the festival has also released a first-look image of the film, which you can see above.
Almodóvar has made two short films in English: the Jean Cocteau-inspired breakup tone poem “The Human Voice,” which premiered at Venice in 2020, and gay Western “Strange Way of Life,” starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal, which played Cannes 2023. That was all in service of preparing to make his first movie entirely in English, “The Room Next Door,” led by “The Human Voice” star Tilda Swinton as a war correspondent named Martha. Her friend, an author named Ingrid (Julianne Moore), brings various buried resentments to a head in Madrid. The rest of the cast includes John Turturro, Alessandro Nivola, and Juan Diego Botto, among others.
Here’s the official synopsis: “‘The Room Next Door’ follows the story of a very imperfect mother and a spiteful daughter separated by a serious misunderstanding. Between them, another woman, Ingrid (Julianne Moore), the mother’s friend, is the keeper of their pain and bitterness. Martha, the mother (played by Tilda Swinton), is a war reporter and Ingrid an autofictional novelist. The film addresses the endless cruelty of war, the very different ways in which the two female authors approach and write about reality, death, friendship, and sexual pleasure as the best allies in the fight against horror. And it also evokes the sweet awakening with the chirping of birds, in a house built in the middle of a nature reserve in New England, where the two friends live in an extreme and strangely sweet situation.”
Sony Pictures Classics, as the distributor does for nearly all Almodóvar’s movies nowadays, will release “The Room Next Door” in the fall in North America. “The Room Next Door” is produced by El Deseo, the company Pedro shares with his brother and longtime collaborator, Agustín. Sony Classics previously released Pedro Almodóvar‘s 2019 feature, “Pain and Glory,” to a Best Actor Oscar nomination for Antonio Banderas and a Best International Feature nomination representing Spain. Almodóvar’s 2021 Venice opener “Parallel Mothers” earned Penélope Cruz a Best Actress nomination. Based on the official synopsis, “The Room Next Door” extends Almodóvar’s late-career interest in examining his own country’s politics, as “Parallel Mothers” used melodrama to consider the Spanish Civil War under Francisco Franco’s dictatorial regime.
Almodóvar had planned to make “A Manual for Cleaning Women,” an adaptation of Lucia Berlin’s short stories and starring Cate Blanchett, his first English feature before moving on to “The Room Next Door.” The latter film shot in Madrid, on location, earlier this year. Venice’s Alberto Barbera touted the director during the festival press conference July 23 for rushing the edit to get the film into the competition.
Swinton previously told IndieWire a bit about “The Room Next Door”: “It’s a beautiful thing, and I can’t say that much more about it, but I can tell you it’s a real Almodóvar film. What I can tell you is that it’s about mature friendship in a way.” Swinton also said it’s a “natural successor” to “Pain and Glory,” semi-autobiographical for Almodóvar in its reflections on a fictional filmmaker’s life and work.
Alongside Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door,” world premieres making their way to Venice include Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer,” Pablo Larraín’s “Maria,” and Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist.”
