26/01/2024 - The Spanish director's next film will be a drama on conflictive maternity that will be shot in English, starting in March, between Madrid and New York

Actress Julianne Moore, director Pedro Almodóvar and actress Tilda Swinton during the preproduction of The Room Next Door (© Iglesias Más)

A few months ago Pedro Almodóvar announced that after shooting two medium-length films in English –The Human Voice (read more) and Strange Way of Life (read more)– and after breaking the deal he had made with Cate Blanchett to adapt Lucia Berlin’s novel A Manual for Cleaning Women, (read more), he would finally direct a feature film in the language of his admired Douglas Sirk and George Cukor.

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So, in March he will begin The Room Next Door, which will be filmed in Madrid and New York with a trio of English-speaking stars including the British Tilda Swinton (who we recently saw in The Eternal Daughter [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] and who has already worked with the director in The Human Voice) and the American Julianne Moore (who we can see in the recent Secrets of a Scandal) and John Turturro (recently in The Batman and the series Separation, who has already worked for European directors in My Mother [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nanni Moretti
film profile] and the series The Name of the Rose [+see also:
series review
series profile], among other titles).

According to a statement issued by El Deseo, the director’s production company, “the story of The Room Next Door follows a very imperfect mother and a resentful daughter separated by a great misunderstanding. Among them, another woman, Ingrid (played by Julianne Moore), a friend of the mother’s, is the repository of their pain and bitterness. Martha, the mother (Tilda Swinton), is a war reporter and Ingrid is an autofiction novelist".

Although the name of the actress who will play the daughter has not yet been announced (some pools point to Anya Taylor-Joy after an interview in which the two-time Oscar winner praised the Argentinian-born American and the different times they have met, such as at the 2022 Oscar ceremony), the story is reminiscent of previous Almodóvar films that dealt with the complex relationships between parents and their offspring Julieta [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Pedro Almodóvar
film profile], Volver [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Agustín Almodóvar
interview: Carmen Maura
interview: Pedro Almodóvar
interview: Pénélope Cruz
film profile] and Tacones lejanos [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

"The film discusses the limitless cruelty of war, the very different ways in which the two writers approach reality and write about it. It also talks about death, friendship and sexual pleasure as the best allies in the fight against horror. And also of the sweet awakening to the chirping of birds, in a house built in the middle of a nature reserve in New England, where the two friends live in an extreme and strangely sweet situation", the press release concludes.

The Room Next Door is produced by El Deseo.

(Translated from Spanish by Vicky York)