by Mattie Lucas
Cinema from a Decidedly Queer Perspective
The Room Next Door | 2024
On paper, the mixture of Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton in the first English language feature by Pedro Almodóvar sounds like a can't miss prospect. The basic ingredients are all there, bright colors (that red lipstick!), women in crisis, a sensually moody score by Alberto Iglesias, but The Room Next Door feels strangely cold and distant, a germ of an idea that never seems to fully get off the ground.
A trans woman gets out of bed and pads across the room to the bathroom. She is naked. She goes to the bathroom. She brushes her teeth. It is a ritual I've performed so many times without a second thought, and now I'm watching it in a movie. I am struck by how commonplace this feels, how incredibly normal. I notice that her body isn't that different from mine. This is not a hyper-sexualized porn star; this is a regular transgender woman living a regular life. Our bodies are so often fetishized that it feels wholly transgressive to see a nude trans woman on screen simply existing - not being used as a sex object or an object of pity, just another woman going through motions that feel so mundane yet so familiar.