In 'The Room Next Door,' Almodovar's power doesn't get lost in translation

Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore dive deep into a story of friendship and loss.

It feels a little jarring to hear English being spoken in a Pedro Almodovar film. The Spanish language feels as essential to the filmmaker’s work as his other tropes – bright colors, melodramatic scores, twisty plots, heightened emotions. His recent foray into English-language films, with the shorts “The Human Voice” and “Strange Way of Life” and now the feature “The Room Next Door,” could spark worries that something would get lost in translation.

But while it takes a little getting used to, “The Room Next Door” ends up feeling like classic Almodovar. The writer-director revisits one of his favorite themes, the bonds between women that grow only stronger in the face of adversity – or, in this case, in the face of death.

He’s aided immeasurably by teaming up two of the best actresses working today, Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, who fully give themselves over to Almodovar’s way of making movies. That sometimes means having to deliver mannered dialogue, but also means diving deep into the emotional lives of his characters.

Moore plays Ingrid, a novelist who writes fiction that’s adjacent to, but not steeped in, her own life. At a book signing, she learns that an old friend she hasn’t seen for years, Martha (Swinton), has terminal cancer, and the two friends reconnect. Martha was a war correspondent, and much is made about how she is unafraid to see the truth of the world while Ingrid needs to half-conceal it behind the gauzy film of fiction.

This is especially true of death. While Ingrid is uneasy about accepting mortality, Martha is facing it head-on. She asks Ingrid’s help as she contemplates euthanizing herself. Not to assist in the procedure itself, but merely to be in the same house, in “the room next door,” so that she doesn’t feel alone when she dies.

Ingrid reluctantly agrees, and the pair go to an absolutely gorgeous country house in upstate New York. (One staple of Almodovar films is that no matter how tragic the circumstances are, the clothes and home decor can still be fabulous. Martha faces her mortality in a stunning canary-yellow pants suit, while Ingrid seems to have a bright green sweater for every occasion.)

As the women spend Martha’s final days together, “The Room Next Door” really finds its footing. It’s not that the artifice is stripped away, but that the film and the actresses move through it to tap into a deep well of authentic emotion.

(Photos courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics)

There are moments in the film that are sublime and achingly sad, such as when Martha is looking out her hospital window at falling snowflakes, turned pink by the lights of New York City, and recites the final lines of James Joyce’s “The Dead.” I don’t know how another filmmaker could have gotten themselves to that place.

There’s some additional plot business that feels endemic to Almodovar films – hidden secrets from the past, a flashback that feels like a self-contained short story, even the same actress playing two roles. But at 75, the filmmaker seems to be telling his stories about friendship and loss in a more straightforward, blunt way than in the past. Perhaps, like Ingrid and Martha, he realizes there’s no time to waste hiding how you really feel.

“The Room Next Door” is in theaters. In Madison, it opens Friday at AMC Fitchburg 18.