The red carpet remains the hottest spot on the Lido where Venice Film Festival rolled on into a new week on Monday with a fresh infusion of fashionable actors and auteurs. Leading the pack, and turning heads tonight, were The Room Next Door stars Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton with their director, Pedro Almodóvar.
The Spanish filmmaker followed his two leading ladies as the last of the trio to arrive, making a statement in a a bright pink suit. Moore opted for a show-stopping sequin gown in chartreuse while Swinton pulled out another dramatic monochromatic look, this time in gray Chanel Couture.
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The film is an adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s 2020 novel What Are You Going Through. It centers on a best-selling writer named Ingrid (Moore) and Martha (Swinton) as they rekindle a friendship after years of being out of touch. As they immerse themselves in memories of the past, Martha, battling terminal cervical cancer, reveals her plan to die with dignity and asks Ingrid to be in the next room when she takes a euthanasia pill.
Their appearance at Monday night’s premiere followed an earlier outing in the afternoon for the film’s official press conference. Moore, a regular at the European film festivals like Cannes, opted for an ankle length red and black Bottega Veneta dress while Swinton slipped into a monochromatic look with a silk shirt, jacket and trousers by Delpozo. Swinton’s custom look by a Spanish designer seems a fitting choice while promoting a film by Spain’s most iconic auteur.
At that press conference, Moore took time to sing Almodóvar’s praises and say the film centers on something she said so rarely gets the big-screen treatment: female friendship.
“What is so compelling about this film and the lens that Pedro puts on this relationship is that not only do we have a mother and daughter story, which we see actually often in literature and in film, but we very rarely see a story about female friendship, and especially female friends who are older… I don’t know that there’s another filmmaker in the world would do that,” she explained. “Obviously, we have romantic relationships, we have familiar relationships. But the importance of those cannot be overvalued. I mean, they really, really are tremendous. And the fact that he chose to portray this relationship, to elevate it, to show us the love story that it is, I think, is truly extraordinary, and it felt special to us, too, to me and Tilda.”
For her part, Swinton talked a bit about her views on the end of life. “I’m personally not frightened of death and I have never been,” she explained. “I know that we stop, and the whole journey towards accepting death can be long for some people, for some reason and with certain experiences in my life, it came quite early… One of the things this film is a portrait of is self-determination, someone who decides to take her life and her living and her dying into her own hands.”
In his review, The Hollywood Reporter’s chief film critic, David Rooney, calls it “a mixed bag that eventually delivers” by writing “melodrama and theatricality” are tamped down, “resulting in a very measured drama about life, death and the responsibilities of friendship that at times risks becoming an arid intellectual exercise. Without two such accomplished lead actors, it’s doubtful this would work at all.”
