Almodóvar Gets 20-Minute Standing Ovation for ‘The Room Next Door’

Pedro Almodovar, Tilda Swinton (left) and Julianne Moore (right) on the red carpet for “The Room Next Door” during the Venice Film Festival. AFP

Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar returned to the Venice Film Festival with stars Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore. Their film “The Room Next Door” had its world premiere at the Lido on Monday night, where it received a standing ovation for almost 20 minutes. While a new Almodóvar film is always an event for cinephiles, this one has a special significance: it is his English-language debut. “My sense of uncertainty disappeared after the first table read with the actresses, with the exchange of the first instructions,” the director wrote in a statement. “Language was not going to be a problem, and not because I had mastered English, but because of the total willingness of the entire cast to understand me and to make it easier for me to understand them.”

Moore and Swinton play estranged friends who met in their youth at a magazine job and whose lives took different paths. Ingrid (Moore) wrote novels. Martha (Swinton) became a war reporter. And now, after years apart, they are reunited in New York when Ingrid learns that Martha has cancer and is in a nearby hospital. Over the following weeks and months, they reconnect, learning about each other’s lives and the lives of Martha’s estranged daughter through a series of revealing conversations.

Before the film’s release, Swinton said she never would have imagined that Almodóvar would eventually find a place for her in one of his films. She said she had “worshipped in his church” since she saw “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” in London in the late 1980s. In Almodóvar, she thought, there was a kindred artistic spirit. “I still feel like a student watching his first film,” Swinton said. But she was English, and he worked exclusively in Spanish. The idea of ​​working together seemed like a fantasy. One day, she said, she worked up the courage to tell him something. “I said, ‘Listen, I’ll learn Spanish for you, you can make me mute,’” Swinton said. “Like always,” he laughed. Moore added, “I don’t know how I managed to get into that world, but I felt lucky that he chose me.”

Almodóvar’s last appearance in Venice was in 2021, when he presented the film “Parallel Mothers,” for which Penelope Cruz won the award for best actress. In 2019, Venice also awarded him a lifetime achievement award. However, his history with Venice goes back 40 years.

“I was born as a film director in 1983 in Venice,” he said. A few years later, he returned with the classic “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.” He wrote of his latest film, “Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore carry the weight of the whole film on their shoulders and are a spectacle. I was lucky that they both give a real recital. At times during the shoot, both the crew and I were on the verge of tears watching it. It was a very moving shoot and in a way, a blessing.”

Even though the specter of death looms large in the film, when Martha asks Ingrid to spend her final days with her in their upstate home, everyone feels that this is a film about life.

“We talked a lot about life, but we didn’t really talk about death. What can you say? You can talk about dying,” Swinton said. “This film is a portrait of self-determination… That feeling (of death) as a celebration felt very real and very close to home, and I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same thing if I were in her shoes.”

Both Swinton and Moore were excited to star in a film that shines a light on female friendship between two women their own age. “We very, very rarely see a story of female friendship, and especially a story about friends who are older,” Moore said. “The importance that he shows us is so extraordinary, and it moved me so much that he portrayed this relationship as being so profound, because it is.” The film is playing in competition at the 81st Venice Film Festival, alongside films like “Maria” and the yet-to-be-released “Queer” and “Joker: Folie à Deux.” The winners will be announced Sept. 7. Sony Pictures Classics will release “The Room Next Door” in December.

Associated Press Press Agency