Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door,” starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, has been selected as the Centerpiece selection for the 62nd New York Film Festival. Quite interesting how it's being dubbed a “U.S. premiere” — does that mean it’ll get added to the TIFF lineup? It’s not going to Telluride and will be having its world premiere at Venice.
Here’s the synopsis:
Ingrid (Julianne Moore), a best-selling writer, rekindles her relationship with her friend Martha (Tilda Swinton), a war journalist with whom she has lost touch for a number of years. The two women immerse themselves in their pasts, sharing memories, anecdotes, art, movies—yet Martha has a request that will test their newly strengthened bond. Pedro Almodóvar’s finely sculpted drama, his first English-language feature, is the unmistakable work of a master filmmaker, a hushed and humane portrayal of the beauty of life and the inevitability of death, graced with incandescent performances by Moore and Swinton that tap the very essence of being. Adapting Sigrid Nunez’s treasure of a novel, What Are You Going Through, Almodóvar has exquisitely reframed his career-long fascination with the lives of women for an American vernacular, capturing Manhattan and upstate New York with enraptured affection.
This is Almodóvar’s full-length English-language debut. He’d previously directed two shorts in English, “The Human Voice” and “Strange Way of Life.” Almodóvar has stated that they were just warm-ups to get him accustomed to directing English-speaking actors. I sure hope they were warmups because I didn’t find those shorts to be that impressive.
“The Room Next Door” is Almodóvar’s 15th NYFF premiere. Almodóvar made his NYFF debut with 1988’s “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” with later premieres including “All About My Mother,” “Bad Education,” “Volver,” “The Flower of My Secret,” “The Skin I Live In,” “Julieta,” “Pain and Glory,” “The Human Voice,” and “Strange Way of Life.” His Oscar-winning “Talk to Her,” along with “Broken Embraces” and “Parallel Mothers,” all closed NYFF in years past.
The prime catalyst for Netflix's risk-free shift may have been new content chief Dan Lin, who said two years ago that the company would greenlight films "more about audience, and less about auteurs."