Here’s another big title that’s just screened at Venice: Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door,” starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton. The early consensus is that the film doesn’t quite reach the filmmaker’s high standards of quality.
Almodóvar’s English-language debut is receiving mixed reviews from IndieWire, The Wrap,THR,The Telegraph, Collider, Vulture, Financial Times, Screen Rant, ICS, and Cineuropa,
On the positive side, you have complimentary writeups from The Daily Beast, Deadline, Screen, The Guardian, Variety, IONCINEMA, Vanity Fair.
The film is said to be visually sumptuous, with a pair of great performances from Moore and Swinton, but the constant expository storytelling turned off some critics, so did its polarizing ending which seems to have sparked some heated debate on the Lido.
“The Room Next Door” follows the story of Martha, a flawed mother working as a war reporter, and Ingrid, her spiteful daughter who is an auto-fictional novelist. While the mother and daughter are separated by a serious misunderstanding, another woman is the keeper of their pain and bitterness.”
The film is set to further screen at TIFF and NYFF in the coming weeks. The film is said to portray how “death, friendship and sexual pleasure can fight life’s horrors" according to its filmmaker. Almodóvar only wrapped shooting “The Room Next Door” in May but hurried it up for a Venice premiere.
Almodóvar, who previously directed two shorts in English, “The Human Voice” and “Strange Way of Life,” has stated that they were just warm-ups to get him accustomed to directing English-speaking actors.
Sony Pictures Classics is in charge of U.S. distribution. Warner Bros. A December release date has been set up for the film.
Reeves is supposed to direct, David E. Kelley is writing, and just like that, Apple got cold feet — the usual “creative differences” excuse is being cited in the report, and maybe that was indeed the case.