In Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966), a nurse (Bibi Andersson) and her silent patient (Liv Ullmann) share a painful intimacy. As the caregiving relationship evolves, their separate identities begin to break down and apart during a series of tense emotional exchanges. Until, at the movie’s climax, Bergman fuses their faces together.
This intense vision of two people merging into one ends with the celluloid itself seen to be melting onscreen. Were they the same woman from the start, two aspects of a singular psyche at war with itself?
Pedro Almodóvar sets up a similar dynamic between the two performers who star in his new film, The Room Next Door. After a decades-long pause in their friendship, Ingrid (Julianne Moore) reunites with Martha (Tilda Swinton) in a hospital room. Martha’s suffering from cervical cancer. During a brief period of remission, they reconnect and start to spend time together.
Unlike the heightened dynamics that take place in Persona, Ingrid and Martha’s conversations pale in comparison. They speak in measured tones about past boyfriends, their careers and Martha’s estranged daughter Michelle. Even when Martha asks Ingrid to take part in her plan to take a euthanasia pill, the emotional temperature between them stays cool. Ingrid tells Martha she’ll think about it. A few minutes later in the back of a taxi, she calls Martha and agrees to help her.
A master of 1950s Sirkian melodrama, The Room Next Door is Almodóvar’s first feature-length film in English. It’s immediately apparent from the very first exchanges that the script lacks the buoyancy, verve and music which are characteristic of the director’s native Spanish language films.
Swinton and Moore are Oscar-winning, admirable thespians but, as written, both Ingrid and Martha lack specificity, not only as individuals but also as old friends. The words they’ve been given to say keep idiosyncrasies at bay.
Almodóvar often relies on carefully constructed flashbacks to reveal secrets and to examine what’s at stake for the protagonists. In this film, only one flashback haunts viewers with its own unexplained strangeness but it doesn’t account for the women’s past association.
Their newfound discovery of each other feels frictionless. Were they ever really that close to begin with? Being acquaintances, rather than the best friends featured in Beaches (1988), might account for Ingrid’s willingness to sign on.
Visually, The Room Next Door compensates for the understated script with striking scenic designs, wardrobe and makeup choices, and by Almodóvar’s unmatched clarity when it comes to the framing of each shot. The director arranges his subjects inside a tableau composed of vibrant color schemes and lush, enviable living quarters. If paused, the most beautiful scenes could be printed out and mounted on a gallery wall.
Martha dressed in a boxy, chartreuse suit, composing her face with wine dark lipstick before lying down on a fern green lounge chair. Or Ingrid standing in a stark mid-century modern stairwell looking up toward Martha’s bedroom, pondering the state of her friend’s health and the choice she’s made to accompany her.
Without saying a word, she walks upstairs to settle in bed beside her friend for a shared nap. Almodóvar frames the women’s heads in the bedroom, placing Ingrid like a moon that’s setting behind Martha’s sun-facing planet. It recalls Bergman’s scene in Persona when the two women become one. Here, there’s no psychic overlap nor does the director hint at a sexual frisson.
In these contemplative moments, Moore’s talents aren’t dormant but as Ingrid she’s frustratingly compliant with all of Martha’s wishes. At one point, Martha tells Ingrid that she wasn’t the first friend she’d asked for help; Ingrid was the fourth. In this final phase of Martha’s life, they found each other at the right time and are fulfilling each other’s unspoken need for connection. But their closeness is expressed formally. Ingrid shields herself from the messiness of her friend’s impending death by practicing politeness and restraint.
Swinton can be a terrifying, elemental force on screen. As Martha, her formidable façade disappears inside of the character’s fading vitality. Yet it’s Martha’s willpower that drives the actions of both women. It’s the quietest, most recessive performance she’s ever given. But without the sparkling cadences of the Spanish language, The Room Next Door can sound like a thinly veiled manifesto pleading the case for a person’s right to die.
The Room Next Door opens Jan 17 at the AMC Mercado 20 in Santa Clara and the Century Downtown Redwood City.
