The next chamber on Canal Plus: an irresistible (critical) actresses duo
Both the first American film (with Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton) and a great terminal work, the new Pedro Almodovar subtly disturbs time.
Rewarded with the Golden Lion last year at the Venice Mostra, The next room is broadcast this Tuesday evening on Canal Plus (and already available on MyCanal). The first feature film in the English language of Pedro Almodovar stage Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton In a new testamentary work, in the line of pain and glory, taking place in the New York of the 1980s. Here is what first said when it was released in January: last January:
The soundtrack of Alberto Iglesias, as often, has Hitchcockian accents. There is no police intrigue strictly speaking here, but an outlaw pact: that knotted between Ingrid (Julianne Moore) and Martha (Tilda Swinton). Achieving an incurable evil, she wants to end her life, and would like her friend to be in “the room next door”, the night when she takes the fatal pill.
Until then, in the comfort of a house away from the world, the two women will have the opportunity to take stock of their lives. And Almodovar to take stock of his art, he who signed in 2019 with pain and glory his great ruminative film, but does not seem to want to slow down.
Between a claimed edge and artificiality (its side of Palma), the Spaniard turns out to be as much haunted here by the idea of the film “Testament” (quote from people of Dublin, the masterpiece of the genre, to the key), which carried by the excitation of a first US feature film with international stars. The beginning and the end merge, America and Spain too, in this film where girls are the sosies of mothers and where the evocation of the wild New York of the 80s is especially reminiscent of the Movida.
Caught between eternity and moment T (worried mentions of climate change and the rise of populisms), Almodovar wanders in his work, in that of his masters, in his own esthete room, and films characters already dead, already bereaved, to better speak of this fascinating feeling: that of being a spectrum inside its own existence.
By Pedro Almodovar. With Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, John Turturro… Duration 1h47. Released January 8, 2025
