Review: ‘The Room Next Door’ Directly Confronts Death, Terminal Illness and Euthanasia
Pedro Almodovar’s first English language film is daring, stylish and mature
This may come as a surprise — and may make me seem like a contrarian, sorry — but my limited experience with the cinema of beloved Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar has, so far, been disappointing. While I have only seen four of his films, most of which aren’t seen as his best, I have so far only really liked one — 2011’s The Skin I Live In — and even then, I haven’t seen that film since maybe 2016. 2021’s Parallel Mothers was an okay film, well acted and intriguing, but it never did anything that really wowed me. And my opinion on last year’s short film Strange Way of Life remains unchanged since my review — how you can have a queer revisionist western starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal be so tame, passionless and frankly boring is a more impressive feat than any of the positives I’ve seen in Almodovar’s films up to this point.
Still, the respect towards his work does pull me in. I want to understand what people love in his work, why they celebrate it so intensely. And while I could have just watched my copies of Almodovar’s biggest successes, including Pain & Glory and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, I was of course pulled in by the…
