Pedro Almodóvar is working on his first film shot entirely in English, the production company El Deseo has confirmed. In ‘The Room Next Door’, Almodóvar will have two English-speaking actresses in the two main roles, the British Tilda Swinton and the American Julianne Moore.
The filming of ‘The Room Next Door’ marks the second time that Swinton has worked under the direction of Almodóvar, as the actress already starred in the short film ‘The Human Voice’, released in 2020.
‘The Room Next Door’ will focus on the story of “a very imperfect mother and a spiteful daughter separated by a great misunderstanding.” Swinton will play the mother, a war reporter, and Moore will play an autofiction writer who is a friend of the mother and “repository of the pain and bitterness of both.”
“The film talks about the limitless cruelty of wars, about the very different ways in which the two writers approach and write about reality, it talks about death, friendship and sexual pleasure as the best allies to fight against the horror,” Pedro Almodóvar explained in a statement. “And it also talks about the sweet awakening with the chirping of birds, in a house built in the middle of a nature reserve in New England, where the two friends live an extreme and strangely sweet situation.”
‘The Room Next Door’ will be Almodóvar’s first feature film since 2021. It was that year that ‘Parallel Mothers’ was released. In 2023, the short film ‘Strange Way of Life’, starring Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke, hit theaters.
