Pedro Almodóvar’s arrival at a film festival is always an event. The veneration that everyone feels for the Spanish filmmaker is felt in the atmosphere from early in the morning. People line up to see each of his films, to see him at the photocall… but above all to listen to him. There have been few press conferences in Venice as eagerly awaited as Almodóvar’s to present The Room Next Door, his first film in English. The adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s novel ¿Qué es tu tourment?, about a friend who asks another to accompany her in the last days of her life.
A story of dignified death and female friendship that Almodóvar decided to tell when, in the middle of reading the novel, he felt shocked by a passage in which the two find themselves in hospital when they had not seen each other for years. “They belong to a generation that I know, I am not from the United States, but I know women of that age,” Almodóvar said about the origin of his first project in English, which came when he felt it naturally. “Filming in English is like starting a new era, and for that I needed the right vehicle, and I found it in the middle of the pages of Sigrid Nunez’s novel,” he acknowledged at the beginning of his meeting with the media at the Venice festival.
He started speaking in English, but switched to Spanish to speak loudly about a message he wanted to highlight. The one that is in his film, perhaps not as obvious as other themes like death or friendship, but that beats in the background. “This film is about empathy and generosity. About that friendship, about that help, but my film is also the answer to the hate speech that we hear every day in Spain and around the world,” he said.
For him, The Room Next Door is “the opposite of these speeches,” and he focused his message on criticizing the far-right’s attacks on the migration issue. “Just as the character of Ingrid opens her arms, let’s do it with these unaccompanied children who are fighting to reach our borders and for whom the Spanish far right wants the government to send the navy to stop them from entering. They want to make them invaders. It’s illusory, it’s stupid and so unfair… What I propose is the opposite, that if we can do something in this world that is so complex and so full of dangers, let’s do it,” he said, receiving a standing ovation from the press room.
His speech continued to warn of another of the problems that the film deals with, climate change: “This is not a joke, this film is about a woman who dies in a world that is dying, and the only solution, even if it is small. pretentious, is that everyone, from their place, demonstrates against the denier and does it in their own neighborhood, whether at home, at work or in the street. “We have to stop this type of denier demonstrations, because we are in danger.” Despite everything, he said he was optimistic and for this he quoted his friend, the late writer Almudena Grandes, and recounted a dedication he had made to her in a book. “It made me realize, Pedro, that joy is the best resistance. “Happiness is the best way to resist, and you are right,” he concluded.
A dignified death
The Room Next Door addresses a theme that has always hovered over Almodóvar’s filmography, death, but he does so from a different place. At the press conference, he recalled his origins in La Mancha and the “great culture of death that was a feminine culture”, and therefore learned from his sister and not from him. Almodóvar expressed his incomprehension in the face of death and assured that today, at 64, he continues to have a childish attitude. “Every day that passes is one day less that I have, but also one more day that I live,” he added.
It is a pro-euthanasia film. Spain is the fourth European country to have a law on euthanasia, but this must happen everywhere in the world without political or judicial regulation.
Pedro Almodovar
— Director
He also wanted to clarify, as he does in the film, his position on euthanasia. “The film expresses, in a rather lofty way, what I think. It is a film in favor of euthanasia. The character decides to get rid of cancer by making a decision. In fact, he says, cancer will not reach me if I get there first, but for that, they must become criminals and undergo interrogation by a fundamentalist policeman. All beliefs are a contribution in this life when you die, but if you are not faithful to any of them, you attack them all, because you become the owner of your own existence. The film is a call. Spain is the fourth European country to have a law on euthanasia, but it must be applied on a global scale. Without political or judicial regulation, simply having a doctor who attests to the seriousness of the patient should be enough,” he stressed.
Although Almodóvar was at the center of the press conference, next to him were the two actresses who starred in The Room Next Door, Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, and for whom he had great words because “they understood the tone of this story, more contained, more austere, emotional but not at all melodramatic. That is why he declared himself lucky.
They also praised the director. Moore defined his cinema and his characters, for whom it seems “that you can hear their heartbeats.” He wanted to emphasize another facet, that he focuses “on female friendship.” “I don’t think any other director than Pedro would have made this film. It’s so strange, but so exciting, that it hasn’t been described in such a deep way. You don’t usually see that in films. The women I interact with of course also have romantic and family relationships, but he chose to show this relationship and sublimate it, and it’s extraordinary.
