Almodóvar’s new film The Room Next Door was simply exquisite. Compared to most of the hyped-up films that flooded the news feeds over the past year, which I have seen, this one stood out with its profound impact. The meticulously stylized frames, crafted with Almodóvar’s signature vibrant color palette, Tilda’s otherworldly, almost spectral face and ghostly features, the hyper-aesthetic interiors, and the restrained, intellectual dialogues—deep yet expressed in a humanly simple language—create a poetic atmosphere that felt incredibly personal to me. The film transforms into a sensual delight and a melancholic meditation on life and death, or more precisely, on the concept of beautiful death. Most importantly, it offers an enlightening realization—like a sudden illumination—about what poetry truly is: nothing but a human ritual of naming the fleeting beauty of life just before the eternal farewell.
