Venice (dpa) – It takes a lot of skill to talk about death as lightly as Pedro Almodóvar. The Spanish star director won the Golden Lion in Venice with a courageous and poetic plea for euthanasia. His drama “The Room Next Door” tells the story of a terminally ill woman who wants to end her own life – and receives support from her friend.
Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore play the main roles – and are great in them, judges jury president Isabelle Huppert. She says of Almodóvar: “He makes us think about what it means to be alive and what it means to end your life.”
Not only “The Room Next Door”, but also the other winning films at this year’s film festival make difficult topics tangible on a personal level. “What many of the films we liked had in common was that big human, social and political questions were told through individual fates or family constellations,” said director and jury member Julia von Heinz to the German Press Agency.
Almodóvar’s winning film
As viewers are used to from Almodóvar’s films, “The Room Next Door” also has a special look – with bright colors and compositions that are framed like paintings. The drama is also light-hearted and has some funny moments.
“The film is strangely never really sentimental,” said Huppert. “The humor ran through it all,” said von Heinz. Almodóvar tells the story of female friendship – a topic that is not often dealt with in films, as Julianne Moore noted in Venice.
Because she has terminal cancer, Martha (Swinton) has bought a pill on the darknet that will kill her. She faces her death quite calmly, but does not want to be alone at this moment. Therefore, she asks Ingrid (Moore) to accompany her to a rented house in the country to die – and to be in the room next door when she takes the pill.
Once they arrive at the elegant luxury villa, Martha and Ingrid spend their days talking about books and relationships, watching films – or making themselves comfortable on sun loungers that make the two women look like a painting by Edward Hopper. An art print by him hangs in the apartment building.
Almodóvar’s film is remembered above all for its stylish direction – and because it relies on two actresses who work together brilliantly. But the political message is important to the 74-year-old. “People must have the freedom to live and die,” he said at the awards ceremony.
Films about what war does to people
Other winners include Italian director Maura Delpero, who received the Grand Jury Prize for her film “Vermiglio.” The historical drama tells the story of a family in an Italian mountain village during World War II.
The film focuses primarily on the female characters and their lives, which are shaped by Catholicism and patriarchal structures. They are not allowed to decide for themselves about their lives and are forced into their roles by the strict family father and social conventions.
The Silver Lion for best director went to American Brady Corbet for “The Brutalist”. The historical drama tells the story of a Jewish architect who wants to start a new life in the USA after the Second World War. The lead actor in the three-and-a-half-hour epic is Adrien Brody. “The film is about a character who flees from fascism and then encounters capitalism,” said Corbet, describing the work.
Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili received a special jury prize for “April”. The drama is about a gynecologist who performs illegal abortions in rural Georgia.
Nicole Kidman absent due to bereavement
Despite these difficult topics, none of the award-winning films is didactic. Instead, they are all characterized by a particularly powerful image, bringing pressing issues to the attention of the audience in an artful way. “We need cinema to address major human and social questions,” says Julia von Heinz, summing up her eleven-day festival.
And sometimes real life intrudes into the cinema. Other award winners include Nicole Kidman and Vincent Lindon, who received the acting awards – but contrary to plan, Kidman was unable to attend the gala. Shortly after arriving in Venice, Kidman received the news that her mother Janelle Ann had died, director Halina Reijn read on stage on behalf of the award winner. “I am in shock and have to go to my family, but this award is for them.”
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