An undeserved Leone d’Oro? The chronicle of a movie fit for purpose

Translated by Irene Cecchi

Sometimes, the standing of a director is enough to consider his works a masterpiece; The room next door is a fitting example. Awarded with the Leone d’Oro at the Venice Film Festival, instead of being praised the movie should open a debate: was this really the best piece in one of the most important festivals in the world? Are we just in front of a mere exercise in style, full of current matters but put together with more astuteness than heart?

“Ingrid and Martha were close friends in their youth, when they worked together at the same magazine. Ingrid became an autofiction writer while Martha a war reporter, so their lives gradually split apart. After years of being out of touch, they meet again in an extreme, but strangely sweet, situation”.

A matter’s wrapping

Before delving into a cold critic I would like to point out that I saw the movie in the original language.

All along the movie I was wondering: what is it, a private diary? A sickness chronicle? An hymn to actuality? Almodóvar seems to take it all very seriously and the result is that it’s a mix of boom subjects that lack a real plot. It’s like a geyser of issues funded on the concept of a slow death (because of the cancer) that is made faster by suicide.

Here there are, all the topics, as if they were taken from a list:

• “Boom” LGBTQ+: the girl at the beginning of the fansign, Marta’s photographer.
• “Boom” environment: just because nowadays we have to talk about it, expressed by a great John Turturro, in my opinion the best performance of the movie.
• “Boom” dark web: the search for the euthanasia pill, heavily underlined and embarrassing, tied to the idea that just one “nerd” could be able to find it (a friend that is mathematician makes it)
• “Boom” patriarchy: displayed through the policeman’s intrusiveness (he just gets in the way) in a scene that ends in itself, with no plot relevance.
• “Boom” religion: the “man of Faith”, still the policeman, who shouts it like it’s a revelation but sounds forced.
• “Boom” pandemic: prepare to be buttonholed.

To be honest, these “thrusts” look more like a to-do list rather than integral elements of a coherent story that should be perceived as fundamental subjects in everyone’s life. This way, not a single issue is appropriately deepened: Almodóvar shows it but it’s left on the surface, just like Gerwick’s concoction called Barbie.

When the narration fails, Almodóvar tries to compensate with symbolism but also in this case the result is more presumptuous than effective. Strawberries, for example, repeat quite often but what do they represent? Why does the hard to open fridge suddenly open easily in the next scene? Snow, a suggestive and recurrent element, at the end turns into a mere background. And then there is the house, described as an oasis, that is “better than the pictures”. But is a good set design enough to save a movie?

Un altro grande problema è la recitazione. Tilda Swinton e Julianne Moore sembrano costrette a interpretare personaggi freddi, privi di spessore e, soprattutto, di emozioni autentiche.

The story doesn’t move, it doesn’t upset, it doesn’t make the audience reflect as much as he would like. The key scenes (such as the burning house one) seem grotesque and out of tune. The soundtrack threw me back to the 90s, the ones from a typical Italian tv series (that may have been great but I don't think that's the goal).

A controversial Leone d’Oro

The critic took the heat off in front of The room next door, as if the name Almodóvar could justify it by itself. But awarding it with the Gold Lion means ignoring clear faults: a movie fit for the purpose that brings up issues without properly delving into them. A piece that, rather than telling it, describes the plot, just like in a newspaper.

Maybe this is the genius of the movie? To tell the story of a war reporter just like she would have written about it in the newspaper front page?

Maybe. But it’s still not enough. If the purpose of cinema is to make you shake, in this case the only thing it does is to list. Almodóvar reenacts death but it never deepens it, as if it’s covered by a layer of snow, such a recurrent element of the movie.

The room may be next door but it feels like we can’t get in fully.

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