Venice 2024: Pedro Almodóvar’s ‘The Room Next Door’ gets longest standing ovation at festival so far at nearly 20 minutes
(LR) Tilda Swinton, Pedro Almodóvar and Julianne Moore attend ‘The Room Next Door’ photocall during the 81st Venice International Film Festival. Photo credit: Victor Boyko
Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar returns to the Venice Film Festival with stars Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore. their movies, next doorIt had its world premiere at the Lido, where it received a standing ovation for about 20 minutes. While a new Almodóvar film is always an event for cinephiles, this one has special significance: it’s his English-language debut.
“After the first table read with the actresses, my insecurities disappeared after the first exchange of gestures,” she wrote in her director’s statement. “The language wasn’t going to be a problem, and not because of my proficiency in English, but because of the whole cast’s whole disposition to understand me and make it easy for me to understand them.”
Moore and Swinton star as estranged friends who met at a newspaper job in their youth and whose lives have taken different paths. Ingrid (Moore) wrote the novel. Martha (Swinton) became a war reporter. And now after years apart, they meet again, in New York, when Ingrid learns Martha has cancer and is in a nearby hospital.
Over the following weeks and months, they reconnect, learning about each other’s lives and Martha’s estranged daughter through a series of conversations.
Before the film’s premiere, Swinton said it never occurred to her that Almodóvar might eventually find a place for her in one of his films. He said he had “worshipped in his high church” since seeing “women on the verge of nervous breakdowns” in London in the late 1980s. Almodovar had a kindred artistic spirit, he thought.
“I still feel like a student watching his first film,” Swinton said. But he was English and he only worked in Spanish. The idea of collaboration seemed like just a fantasy. Then one day, she said, she got up the nerve to tell him something. “I said, ‘Listen, I’ll learn Spanish for you, you can mute me,'” Swinton said. “Characteristically, he laughed.”
Almodóvar’s last Venice appearance was in 2021, where he presented the film parallel motherFor which Penelope Cruz won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. In 2019, Venice also presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. But his history with Venice stretches back 40 years.
“I was born in Venice in 1983 as a film director,” he said. A few years later, he would return with a classic Woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Of his latest, he wrote “Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore carry the weight of the entire film on their shoulders, and they are a spectacle. I am lucky to have both give a true recital. During the shoot, both the crew and I were on the verge of tears watching them. It is a very The shoot was ongoing and, in a way, blessed.”
Although death occurs in the film, when Martha asks Ingrid to join her in a home for her final days, 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 death,” Swinton said. “This film is a portrait of self-determination… This feeling of celebrating (death) felt very real and very relatable to me and I can’t say that I wouldn’t have acted the same way if I had been in the film. his shoes.”
Both Swinton and Moore were excited to star in a film that spotlighted a female friendship between two women their age.
“We rarely see stories about female friendships, and especially stories about older female friends,” Moore said. “The importance that he shows us is so unusual and so moving to me that he portrays this relationship as so deep, because it is.”
The film is in competition with the likes of Maria and the yet-to-premiere at the 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival. Queer And Joker: Folie à Deux. Winners will be announced on September 7.
Sony Pictures will release Classics next door In theaters in December.
