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Join Telegram ChannelBoth the first American film (with Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton) and a major final work, the new Pedro Almodovar subtly disrupts time.
The soundtrack by Alberto Iglesias, as often, has Hitchcockian overtones. There is no detective intrigue strictly speaking here, but an outlaw pact: the one formed between Ingrid (Julianne Moore) and Martha (Tilda Swinton). Suffering from an incurable illness, she wants to end her life, and would like her friend to be in “the room next door” the night she takes the fatal pill.
Until then, in the comfort of a home away from the world, the two women will have the opportunity to take stock of their lives. And Almodovar takes stock of his art, he who signed in 2019 with Pain and Glory his great ruminative film, but does not seem to want to slow down the pace.
Between purity and claimed artificiality (his De Palma side), the Spaniard reveals himself here as much haunted by the idea of the film “testament” (quote from People of Dublinthe masterpiece of the genre), only carried by the excitement of a first US feature film with international stars. The beginning and the end merge, America and Spain too, in this film where the girls are doubles of the mothers and where the evocation of the wild New York of the 80s is especially reminiscent of Movida.
Caught between eternity and the T moment (worried mentions of climate change and the rise of populism), Almodovar wanders through his work, in that of his masters, in his own aesthete's room, and films characters who are already dead , already in mourning, to better talk about this fascinating feeling: that of being a specter inside one's own existence.
By Pedro Almodóvar. With Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, John Turturro… Duration 1h47. Released January 8, 2025