2024-09-09 16:53:34
The new film by Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, which premiered this week at the Venice Film Festival, deals with cancer, the climate crisis or the friendship between two women. This is the first film that the 74-year-old Oscar-winning filmmaker made in English.
Czech cinemas will start screening the new feature entitled Vedlejší pokoj on December 5. Tilda Swinton stars as a former war correspondent suffering from stage three cancer. She voluntarily decides to end her life before the disease robs her of her senses.
Before that, however, she wants to spend the last few days with her former colleague. They used to work together in the same magazine, and even had a common lover. This journalist became an award-winning author writing so-called autofiction, i.e. books strongly inspired by her personal life. The character was portrayed by Julianne Moore.
The story takes place in the USA. And according to director Pedro Almodóvar, it is first and foremost a celebration of life. At the same time, the artist expressed his belief that people should be able to die with dignity if they really wish to. “This film supports euthanasia,” summed up the author at the Venice festival.
Almodóvar criticizes countries like America, where the killing of a patient by a doctor at the patient’s own request is illegal, just like in the Czech Republic. On the other hand, the filmmaker highlights Canada, Spain and Portugal, which have legalized euthanasia in the last decade. “I would like it to be available worldwide,” he adds.
Including short works, the renowned creator made almost forty films, but always in Spanish. Only now has he dared to work with actors speaking English on camera. “It was like trying a new genre for me, like I was shooting science fiction,” compares the winner of two Oscars for the dramas All About My Mother and Talk to Her.
Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore in The Next Room. | Photo: Sony Pictures Classics
Lead actress Tilda Swinton has followed him since his first films. She always wanted to act in one. “Once I even suggested to him that I should learn Spanish for it or that he could write me a role without lines,” the actress says.
Her character closes her life in the film. Almodóvar overlays these passages with a warning of a climate catastrophe, in the light of which the fate of the individual pales. “So it’s also a film about how one woman dies in a world that is probably dying itself,” adds the filmmaker, who will celebrate his 75th birthday in a few weeks. “Climate change is not a duck. I don’t know what more evidence people need to start taking it seriously,” he adds.
Despite the gloomy subject matter, the story offers optimism and hope, both actresses agree. “You’ll feel like you’ve seen yourself and other human beings. When you leave the theater, you’ll be grateful for every day,” says Julianne Moore, 2015 Oscar winner for Still Me.
The Side Room is one of 21 titles competing for the main prize of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. The winner will be announced on Saturday.
According to the British newspaper The Times, the news is unsurprisingly dark, perhaps too much for some of the director’s fans. “Most of the footage is taken up by a conversation between two women about wars, the climate crisis, the ruthless nature of cancer and mortality,” warns the reviewer.
But according to him, the director, for example, cleverly changes the dynamic between the two women. The character played by Tilda Swinton uses cancer to subtly manipulate her friend. She, on the other hand, is clearly going to extract the experience and write a novel out of it.
The Times awarded the film four out of five stars. It earned the same rating in the British Guardian newspaper, which describes it as a wonderfully fragile melodrama. “The more the heroines renew their former friendship, the richer and truer the film becomes,” praises the newspaper.
Variety.com is also impressed, according to which Tilda Swinton gives a “monumental, raw and thoughtful performance”. Although this is Almodóvar’s umpteenth film about death, it has a cathartic effect on the audience and rather encourages the desire to live, the critic wrote.
Video: Teaser trailer from the movie The Next Room
Czech cinemas will release the film Vedlejší pokoj on December 5. | Video: Warner Bros.