The Venice Film Festival 2024 It started almost a week ago and along the way some key films have already won the main prizes of the competition. Among them The Orderthe latest from Justin Kurzel or The Brutalistwho is undoubtedly the big favorite of this 81st edition. The turn came a few hours ago to Pedro Almodóvar and The next piece. In the end, the most international film by the filmmaker from La Mancha received a standing ovation from 17 minutespositioning itself as a film to keep in mind in the final stretch towards next year’s Oscars.
The next piece This is the first English-language feature film by the Oscar-winning Spanish director, starring two stars of the caliber of Tilda Swinton and Julianne MooreThe talent behind the adaptation of author Sigrid Nunez’s “What Are You Going Through” drew a flurry of praise and crowd-pleasing from members of the art department. Almodóvar explained at a later press conference that the film was a critique of the hate speech he said was proliferating in his country and Europe, while also defending the right to euthanasia. Produced by your seal Desire and distributed by Sony Pictures, the critical reception of the new film has been more generous in Spain than in the international press. Quite the opposite of what happened with his previous job, Parallel mothers. Wrapping up its main cast, the film also features John Turturro (Barton Fink) And Alessandro Nivola (You were never really there), in addition to incorporating several leading Spanish actors such as Juan Diego Botto, Raúl Arévalo and Vicky Luengo.
Although this is the first feature film shot entirely in English by the director of All About My Motherthe filmmaker had already experimented with the Anglo-Saxon language by shooting two short films; The human voice And strange shape. Before The next pieceAlmodóvar was to take charge of the adaptation of Handbook for housekeepers by Lucie Berlin. A drama of several interwoven stories that will have as its protagonist Cate Blanchett. However, the project was too ambitious and too vast for that of Calatrava Causewaywho ultimately did not have enough energy to undertake a shoot with so many locations. Of course, the project will continue to be produced by El Deseo, without anyone yet hired behind the cameras.
What is “The Room Next Door” about?
The official summary of The next piece is as follows: “Ingrid (Julianne Moore) and Martha (Tilda Swinton) were very close friends in their youth. Both worked for the same magazine, but Ingrid ended up becoming an autofiction novelist and Martha a war journalist. Life circumstances separated them and, after many years without contact, they find themselves again in an extreme, but strangely sweet situation.
In Spain, the film will be distributed by Warner Bros, while Movistar + shares production with the studio run by the director’s younger brother, the producer Agustin Almodovar. For the sound section, Pedro Almodóvar has once again hired the four-time Oscar nominee for best music, Alberto Iglesias. In the photo he is at the controls Edouard Grauan international profile that has created visual spaces of the stature of a lonely man (2009), The gift (2015) or Identity erased (2018).
Euthanasia is one of his themes
At the press conference that followed, the question of euthanasia It took up a good portion of the question round since one of the characters has an inescapable disease. Swinton defined it this way: Variety: “Personally, I’m not afraid of death and I never have been. I think the whole road to accepting death can be a long one for some people, but for some reason, because of certain experiences in my life, I realized it very early on. I know it’s coming. I feel it coming, I see it coming. “One of the things that this film describes is self-determination, someone who absolutely decides to take charge of their life, their life and their death.”
On the other hand, Moore explained that it is very rare to see these kinds of stories on “female friendship”stressing that he doesn’t know if there is any other filmmaker who does this in the world apart from Pedro. The next piece will soon arrive in Spanish cinemas October 18, 2024.
