IN THE LAND OF WOMEN

With The Room Next Door, Pedro Almodóvar tackles a new language, but his ability to translate the experience of women remains rock solid.

- ADRIENNE GAFFNEY

As a little boy in spain, Pedro Almodóvar sat under the table, fascinated, as his mother talked with her friends. He’s still not sure that his mother realized that he was listening or that he was absorbing so much. Hearing the passion, the emotions, the warmth, and the occasional conflict sparked something in him. And throughout his decades-long film career, he has focused on the kinds of deep female relationships that feel absent in cinema. Almodóvar describes this instinct to write about women as almost unconscious. “From a very young age, the imprint that I received is the fighting power of women,” he says. “When I get ideas to tell stories, I gravitate toward the universe of women.”

With The Room Next Door, his latest, the filmmaker so firmly associated with Spain has made his first full-length feature shot in English. But while the New York locales were new for him, the story, of two friends reunited as one accepts her own death, has all the melodrama and moral ambiguity that make it purely Almodóvarean.

The director, 75, is known for how deeply he collaborates with his actors, most famously Penélope Cruz, who has appeared in seven of his films, starting with her unforgettable role in All About My Mother in 1999. “We have a very strong connection, and we have had it since the day we met, when I was 18 years old,” Cruz says. The Room Next Door stars Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, and as has been the case since his earliest days as a filmmaker, the roles for his leading ladies are deep, thoughtful, and emotionally real.