Tilda Swinton on Almodovar's Translation for The Room Next Door

Has Tilda Swinton never a bad performance? Across a dazzling career that has spanned avant-garde theatre and experimental cinema to Marvel films, the Scottish actress never fails to shock, delight and astonish.

So it is again with his turn in The room next doorhis second collaboration with Pedro Almodóvar (after the 2020 short film The human voice) and the English-language debut of the Spanish film giant.

An adaptation of the novel by Sigrid Nunez What are you going through?Almodóvar's film follows best-selling author Ingrid (Julianne Moore) and Martha (Swinton) as they rekindle their friendship after losing touch. As they delve into past memories, anecdotes, art and films, Martha, who is battling terminal cervical cancer, wants to die with dignity and asks Ingrid to be in the next room when she takes a euthanasia pill. As in Johanna Hogg's film The Eternal DaughterSwinton plays dual roles: she plays both Martha and her estranged daughter.

The room next door It premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Golden Lion for Best Film. The Hollywood Reporter met Swinton at the Toronto Film Festival, where The room next door celebrates its North American premiere.

The room next door It premiered in Venice, where it received a 17-minute standing ovation. What was that experience like?

18 1/2 if you want, Scott. Do it right! Apparently, that's what it was. I mean, I've been lucky to be in the vortex of those long ovations before, but I've never felt anything like that. There was something similar to the feeling I had for Pedro, like the audience was really involved in thanking him. I think it was really about the director. I was very touched by it, and I think he… I think he deserves it, frankly.

It’s been a long journey for you to make a feature film with Almodovar. Didn’t you say at some point that you would learn Spanish if necessary?

I told him, “Look, I'll learn Spanish or I'll go mute.” But that was years ago, when I first met him, because I knew he wouldn't work in English. It was my assumption. And then, slowly, when he asked me to do it [2020 English-language short] The human voicehis English was much less advanced, and it was a huge step forward for him, with so little English, to tackle something like that monologue in English. Now his English is much better. He did the other short, the cowboy short [2023’s Strange Way of Life].

This film was actually made quite quickly, but yeah, what has been coming for a while is that he made a film in English. One reason for that, which is quite sophisticated, is that his Spanish is also not the Spanish that Spanish people speak. His English, as you see in the film, is not quite the English English. He is a poet, in my opinion, and the music of what he writes is elevated, exalted, removed. It's not exactly some kind of vernacular. It's something very particular, Almodovarian. And I think he knew, for good reason, that if he was going to work in another language, whether it was English or German or Italian or whatever, he would have to find a way to have that elevation. And in my opinion, he found it with this.

I think I understand his reticence, his trepidation. [about working in English] because he knew that his script would have the right kind of music. It's very interesting: when he directs us, he talks a lot about the music of the scene, even though his hearing, and he wouldn't mind if I said this, his hearing is a little bit impaired, and sometimes he doesn't hear exactly the words that we're saying. But he will hear the music, and I imagine that the music he's listening to is music that is quite similar to how it would be in Spanish.

How was it for you and Julianne Moore to act in that style? Because I find that your line reading changes quite drastically from the first half of the film to the second half. In the beginning you are very formal, a little artificial, while in the second half your dialogues become more intimate and more naturalistic. How did you develop that together?

It's funny you say that. Because the response of some [to the first section of the film] was, “Huh?” We knew our job was to figure out how to fulfill this text. We were working with a very specific text, not just a scenario, and the job was to bring it home in our own rhythm. We knew that.

I agree with you. I think the film is more or less divided into two halves, not exactly, but in terms of the relationship, there's this first section, almost a preamble, which is very Pedro, where people meet, and usually one of them talks and tells the other what's happened in their life. And the other one just listens. That's chapter and verse in many, many of his films, most recently in Pain and glory.

His typical first scene is when you meet two people in a bar and one of them tells you what happened recently with them. It’s almost Greek in that way. And then once the relationship develops, in our case when they go home together, everything else is a little muted. The outside world is muted, certainly for Martha, because Ingrid is continuing this conversation with John Turturro’s character. Then it becomes much more of a conversation, rather than one of them, Julianne’s character, witnessing Martha’s story of her life. They start to really live together, they actually have a present to deal with, rather than just recounting the past.

We knew from the beginning that this change was going to happen and we knew we didn't want to taint it. We knew we didn't want to go too soon into something more naturalistic. We talked about it with Pedro. He was very clear: no, this beginning is a kind of introduction to the story and the portraits, I don't like the word characters, but just the portraits of these two women. There's this formalism in this. They're sitting in a hotel room, talking and arguing around a table. Quite formal. And then once they enter the house in the woods, they start to live.

The film's themes are about dealing with death and euthanasia. What did you turn to in order to explore your character, Martha?

First of all, I would prefer that we talk about death with dignity rather than euthanasia. I think euthanasia is a complex term and potentially misleading for what this film is really about, but for me it was an extremely blessed experience because I have been in Ingrid's position so many times in my life. My first “Martha” was Derek Jarman [the British avant-garde director who died of an AIDS-related illness in 1994]My second was [German theater director] Christoph Schlingensief [who died of cancer in 2010]. So just to look at this subject matter and explore it, let alone play Martha, has been such a blessing for me, and such an amazing opportunity. So, yeah, I feel very close to the subject matter.

How do you see Martha? I have spoken to other people who see her as a very selfish figure for how she lived and also for her request to Ingrid.

I mean, there's selfishness. There's two other versions of that: self-determination or maybe self-centeredness. But absolutely. I think there are people who believe that people who take their life into their own hands, take their death into their own hands, are selfish. That's real, and that's in the movie.

That said, Ingrid agrees. She's invited to participate, to be in the next room and testify, and she agrees to do so. I think it's particularly interesting that she's so afraid of death. You know it's a challenge for her. I think that's a real grace note in the film, that the person who says yes [Ingrid] he just wrote a best-selling book about how afraid he is of death.

You don't have to answer this question, because we are talking about a film and not about your personal opinions. But can I ask you what you think about dignified death and how this topic is addressed in our society?

Well, it's handled differently around the world. I know that in Canada, as well as in other European countries, there's a kind of respect for dying with dignity. And that in 10 states, in the United States, there's a provision, whereby if you have the approval of two doctors, and you're terminally ill, you have a dignified death order. But only in 10 states. In many others, and in many countries, it's illegal.

There is an organization I know well in Germany, where you don't have to be terminally ill. It's called the Humane Death Society, and if you explain why you want to end your life, and if it's accepted, you have a kind of six-month grace period and then a doctor and a lawyer come to your house and help you. It's not euthanasia. That's why I think the word euthanasia is a misleading term. Because euthanasia is when someone else administers the dose. That's assisted dying, with the doses made available. But you, with an IV or by turning the switch yourself, do it. A lawyer is there to make sure everything is done legally.

I have been in the privileged position of being with several people at the end of their lives, in varying degrees of comfort and pain, and I think anyone who has had that privilege will think very seriously about the need for a dignified death. In our society, it seems very strange that we allow our animals the grace to escape unbearable pain, but not ourselves.

I think I'm running out of time, but I have one last question. I wonder if you're getting in trouble with SAG now because you keep taking roles away from young actresses who could play your daughter?

Or the older ones who play my mother! [as Swinton played in Johanna Hogg’s The Eternal Daughter]. Well, I'm very stingy: you get two for the price of one. Or three or four. I've been doing it for a while. I think maybe the first time was with Lynn Hirschman, I think in 2002, with a movie we did called Technologywhen I play a cyber specialist called Rosetta Stone, who clones herself three times. So I played four people in that role. It's something I've always really enjoyed. I always think of it as a portrait but with four different aspects or three different ones or two different ones.

Now, this is the second film in quick succession, about a mother and a daughter, in which I play both. In both cases, it seemed very natural to me that both the mother and the daughter were played by the same person. Although this time it was Pedro's suggestion, not mine. In The Eternal DaughterIt was my suggestion. And then it became the subject of the film, actually. But in this case, it was hers. I questioned it for a minute, but then I saw that in a way, it was a similar case, because it is in a way the subject of the film. It's about evolution, it's about survival, it's about the triumph of the future. So they had to be very similar, the mother and the daughter. And what better way than to have me play both of them?