Almodóvar and Tilda Swinton star in “The Room Next Door,” which is Almodóvar’s return to Venice.

Italy, VENICE – On Monday, Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton made their Venice Film Festival comeback as Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. In the evening, “The Room Next Door” will make its international debut on the Lido.

For movie buffs, a new Almodóvar picture is usually a treat, but this one is especially important as it’s his first in English.

In his director’s statement, he stated, “My insecurity vanished after the first table read with the actresses, with the exchange of the first indications.” “The cast’s overall willingness to understand me and make it easy for me to understand them meant that the language wasn’t going to be a problem—not because I’m fluent in English, either.”

Moore and Swinton portray estranged friends whose lives have taken different turns and who first met while working at a magazine in their teens. Novelist Ingrid Moore authored. Swinton went on to work as a war correspondent. And now, after a separation of years, they reunite in New York when Ingrid learns that Martha is undergoing treatment for cancer at a local hospital.

They re-connect during the ensuing weeks and months, sharing candid chats about their lives and Martha’s estranged daughter.

Prior to the movie’s release, Swinton claimed she never would have imagined that Almodóvar would one day include her in a movie. She claimed that ever since watching “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” she has “worshipped in his high church.”Breakdown” in the late 1980s in London. In Almodóvar was a kindred artistic spirit, she thought.

However, he only worked in Spanish and she was English. Working together felt like a pipe dream at best. She claimed that eventually, she worked up the courage to approach him.

 

Swinton said, “Listen, I’ll learn Spanish for you; you can make me mute.” “In his typical manner, he laughed.”

Moore went on, “I felt fortunate that he picked me, but I don’t know how I managed to walk into this world.”

In 2021, Almodóvar made his final appearance at Venice, presenting “Parallel Mothers,” a film for which Penelope Cruz took home the best actress award. He also received a lifetime achievement award from Venice in 2019. But he’s had a forty-year relationship with Venice.

“As a filmmaker, I was born in 1983 in Venice,” he said. A few years later, he’d return with the classic “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.”

Of his latest, he wrote “Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore carry the weight of the whole film on their shoulders, and they are a spectacle. I have been fortunate in that both give a veritable recital. At times during shooting, both the crew and I were on the verge of tears watching them. It was a very moving shoot and, in some way, blessed.”

Though death looms in the film, when Martha asks Ingrid to join her in a house upstate for her final days, all felt that it’s a film about life.

“We talked a lot about life, but we didn’t really talk about death. What can you say? You can talk about dying,” Swinton said. “This film is a portrait of self-determination … This feeling of (death) being a celebration felt for me very real and very relatable and I can’t say that I wouldn’t act in the same way if I was in her shoes.”

Both Swinton and Moore were excited to be in a film that spotlighted a female friendship between two women at their ages.

“We very, very rarely see a story of female friendship and especially a story about female friends who are older,” Moore said. “The importance that he shows us is so unusual and was so moving to me that he portrayed this relationship as so profound, because it is.”

The film is playing in competition at the 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival, alongside the likes of “Maria” and the yet-to-premiere “Queer” and “Joker: Folie à Deux.” Winners will be announced on Sept. 7.

Sony Pictures Classics will release “The Room Next Door” in theaters in December.