Tilda Swinton's The Room Next Door divides critics despite 17-minute standing ovation

The Room Next Door received a sensational 17-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival on Monday, 2 September, the longest of the festival so far (an accolade previously held by The Brutalist).

Starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, the film is Pedro Almodóvar's first English-language feature and it centres on two friends supporting one another. Swinton plays war reporter Martha seeking help from her novelist friend Ingrid (Moore), Martha has cervical cancer and reveals her intention to use a euthanasia pill she obtained illegally to choose how and when she dies.

Thanks to its moving subject the film was well received at its premiere, with Almodóvar celebrating with the actors on stage. Moore was brought to tears by the response, per Variety, and Swinton embraced her while the director began interacting with fans in the audience, extending the ovation even longer.

Despite the huge response The Room Next Door received in the room, critics were not all as convinced by the movie. While some were moved by the drama and found it "thoughtful", others called it "depressingly thin" and "lost in translation".

Deadline's Stephanie Bunbury was a supporting voice for the film, sharing that it has "a heightened approach to a sombre subject that could get lesser actors into a tangle", but commends Swinton and Moore for bringing "Almodóvar’s theatricality and his intensity" to life.

The critic wrote: "Moore in particular, as the great exponent of the melodramatic heroine in the films of Todd Haynes, is in her element. She brings to Ingrid her own natural warmth, along with a deep reading of her character’s cauldron of feelings, while steering clear of naturalism."

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For Variety's Owen Gleiberman the film was taken to new heights by Swinton's performance, which the critic describes as "monumental".

"Tilda Swinton has always had a face so distinctive — pale and severe, expressive in a way that’s almost translucent, with that aura she conjures of looking like the aristocratic elfin alien sibling of David Bowie — that we feel as if we know that face like our own.

"In “The Room Next Door,” Swinton’s face, along with her words, becomes an awesome instrument of inquiry. She gives a monumental performance, one that in its raw emotion, its pensive power, is worthy of comparison to the spirit and virtuosity of Vanessa Redgrave."

The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney also shared kind words about the film, writing that "no male filmmaker has more consistently understood female characters and the actresses playing them than Pedro Almodóvar", which is something that "rescues" his first English-language film.

Rooney describes The Room Next Door as "a very measured drama about life, death and the responsibilities of friendship that at times risks becoming an arid intellectual exercise" but works thanks to Swinton and Moore's central performances.

While the critic commended the actors, the cinematography, and the costumes, there was one thing that needed fine-tuning: the script. Rooney wrote of how it is evident the film is the director's first English-language feature film, because there are scenes where "you might wish Almodóvar had worked with a co-writer able to loosen up the English dialogue and make it more fluid."

IndieWire's Ryan Lattanzio felt similarly, writing that the film was "elegant and confounding in equivalent measure" and "could’ve used a finishing touch from an American script supervisor."

The critic wrote: "The Room Next Door is mannered in a way that doesn’t feel purposeful, stilted and stiff where it should be sumptuous, and aches of the feeling that the Spanish auteur passed his sensibility, and his script, through a direct-to-English transferal that lacks the nuances that, say, a bilingual literary translator would bring to a text brought from Europe to the United States."

Watch the trailer for The Room Next Door

This was a feeling shared by The Telegraph's Robbie Collin, who was unenthused by the film and said the "script is riddled with such odd and effortful turns of phrase" that it might have been better had the director had "an English assistant" help him fine tune it.

Collin also wrote that the film felt "depressingly thin, and not only for linguistic reasons", arguing that it gives little for Swinton and Moore to work with. He wrote: "Both Moore and Swinton, the latter of whom starred in The Human Voice, seem perfectly fitted to Almodóvar’s particular style of heightened melodrama...

"But their roles feel desperately unchallenging for both actresses – while by its nature, the premise entails a lot of talking and waiting, with little scope for the ripples of playfulness and surprise that typically run through this director’s best work. I often felt less like I was watching Almodóvar than middling Woody Allen with the contrast turned up."

At a press conference for the film, Almodóvar spoke of how he hopes euthanasia can become more widely available, per Variety. He said: “There should be the possibility to have euthanasia all over the world. It should be regulated and a doctor should be allowed to help his patient.”

Swinton also spoke on the subject, saying: "I personally am not frightened of death, nor have I ever been. I think the whole journey toward accepting death can be long for some people, but for some reason, because of certain experiences in my life, I became aware early.

“I know it’s coming. I feel it coming, I see it coming. One of the things that this film is a portrait of is self-determination, someone who decides absolutely to take her life and her living and her dying into her own hands.”

The Room Next Door premieres in cinemas on 25 October, 2024.