The Room Next Door

Two old friends, Ingrid and Martha, once shared a youthful chapter working at the same magazine before life pulled them apart. Ingrid became a novelist known for writing autofiction, while Martha built a career as a war correspondent. Years of silence end when they reconnect, and their reunion unfolds in a house set within a nature reserve in New England. What begins as a renewal of an old bond turns into an extreme yet unexpectedly tender situation as Martha, facing illness, makes a request that tests the friendship they have only recently restored.

Pedro Almodóvar wrote and directed the film, his twenty-first feature in chronological order, following Strange Way of Life and preceding Bitter Christmas. It is his first English-language feature, made with longtime producer Agustín Almodóvar and shot across Spain, the United States and France. Julianne Moore plays Ingrid and Tilda Swinton plays Martha, with John Turturro, Alessandro Nivola, Juan Diego Botto and Raúl Arévalo among the supporting cast. Produced on a budget of about 15 million dollars, it returned roughly 22 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.8 from 27,000 votes, on TMDB 6.7 from 715 votes, while a critics' rating stands at 7.1 from 203 reviews, slightly above the audience scores.