Pedro Almodóvar brings the very delicate topic of euthanasia to Venice. He does so with “The Room Next Door”, his new film starring Julienne Moore and Tilda Swinton, an intellectual, aesthetic, conceptually profound and psychologically challenging tale. The story is about two long-time friends who meet again after being apart for years. They are living two opposite phases of life. One is at the peak of her career as a writer, the other is struggling with a cancer that is stealing every trace of her identity. Their reconciliation will bring them face to face with the brutality of death, the power of life, the warmth of friendship. Very interesting is the reflection on free will that Almodóvar proposes with his new film, according to which a man’s decision-making power should dominate his life as well as his death and that choice to tell the end of life in a serene, positive, aesthetic and not tragic way as usually happens in cinema.

Almodóvar’s film, in competition at the Venice Film Festival and ready to be released in theaters on December 5, is, in fact, a more positive feature film than it may seem and a film that focuses heavily on aesthetics with a refined and intellectual direction where art and culture continually float in the air and surround the places and characters of the story. It is a stream of consciousness that the Spanish director does with The Room Next Door, it is a stance, an alarm bell on various current issues. It talks about the right to euthanasia, climate change, war with its consequences on the mental health of those who experience it and the difficulties of motherhood for women who do not want to give up their careers.

You won’t cry or laugh at Almodóvar’s latest work, but you will witness a colorful, calm, refined and decidedly unconventional portrait of death.

Aesthetically perfect but perhaps a little cold in its feelings, The Room Next Door is an undeniably well-made film but that, in some ways, gets lost in its own search for beauty. Perhaps, what is missing in Almodóvar’s latest work is a fluid, rhythmic, engaging plot, a dirtier, more realistic, visceral emotionality, a little more attention to the description of the complexity of human relationships and an ending that is conclusive and satisfying for each of the characters involved in the story.

One gets the feeling that this film is more concerned with its form than with its enjoyability, and this puts up a wall between the emotions that the characters want to convey to the audience and those that the audience actually manages to receive.

The Room Next Door opens a political, social, individual debate, encourages the audience to think critically and pushes them to live life to the fullest. In this it is highly appreciable but overall Almodóvar’s film remains a well-painted picture, pleasant to admire but not so communicative. And this is a real shame.

Rating: 6.4