[ad_1]
The Venice Film Festival awarded its Golden Lion on Saturday to the Spaniard Pedro Almodóvar, offering him at the age of 74 one of the most prestigious prizes of his immense career for his first American film. In “The Room Next Door”, the former enfant terrible of the Movida directs the British actress Tilda Swinton and her American colleague Julianne Moore, in a story of assisted suicide.
“This is my first film in English, but the spirit is Spanish”
Pedro Almodóvar, author of masterpieces such as “All About My Mother”, “Bad Education” or “Pain and Glory”, awarded at the Oscars, had never been consecrated with the supreme prize at a festival. It was finally the jury presided over by Isabelle Huppert, another great face of European auteur cinema, who offered this distinction to the Spaniard, filmmaker of women and feelings par excellence. “It’s my first film in English, but the spirit is Spanish”, he commented upon receiving his award.
A film with a twilight tone, “The Room Next Door” tells the story of Ingrid (Julianne Moore), a novelist anxious about the end of her life, and Martha (Tilda Swinton), her childhood friend, a former war reporter accustomed to defying death, living alone in her beautiful New York apartment and who, suffering from cancer, decides to end her life. A colorful character, still appearing in Venice dressed in a salmon pink suit, Almodóvar nevertheless harbors a certain darkness, more marked in recent years. His award-winning film “speaks of a woman who is dying in a world that is probably also dying,” he explained.
During the award ceremony, the filmmaker made a plea for what he calls a “fundamental right”: “I believe that saying goodbye to this world properly and with dignity is a fundamental right of every human being,” he said, urging “believers of all religions to respect and not interfere in individual decisions on this subject.” “Human beings must be free to live and die when life is unbearable for them,” he concluded.
[ad_2]
Source link -78