On Screen: “The Room Next Door”

The Room Next Door

Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar’s first feature film in English — “The Room Next Door,” winner of the Golden Lion at the 81st Venice International Film Festival — revolves around mortality and euthanasia, the decision to commit suicide.

Aware that her inoperable cervical cancer is terminal, Martha (Tilda Swinton), a former war correspondent estranged from her only daughter, convinces her novelist friend Ingrid (Julianne Moore) to accompany her to a a serenely peaceful rented house — in the woods of upstate New York — where she plans to take a fatal drug dose.

Acquiring the lethal pill off the dark web, Martha decides to be self-determined to the end but she doesn’t want to be alone, which is why she asks Ingrid to be in the room next door, to be her witness.

Although Ingrid is terrified of the concept of death, she reluctantly agrees, and they discover that their friendship and understanding deepens during this final getaway. That’s the crux of Sigrid Nunez’s 2020 novel “What Are You Going Through,” which inspired Almodovar’s adapted screenplay.

Nunez’s novel takes its title from a quote by French philosopher Simone Weil: “The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to ask: ‘What are you going through?’”

That’s explored even further when Ingrid reunites with Damian (John Turturro), an old lover who is obsessed with the environment and climate change, observing, “You’re living with a dying woman in a world also in its death throes.”

In Spain, despite religious opposition, assisted suicide is accepted while — in the United States — the right to die is controversial. Euthanasia is legal in only 10 states and Washington, D.C. Obviously in the context of this film, Almodovar believes that the freedom to end one’s life is a fundamental human right, particularly if the person is living in pain.