Tilda Swinton discusses Pedro Almodóvar's film 'The Room Next Door' in the Variety Studio at TIFF.
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00:00Well, congratulations on The Room Next Door, and I know you were at the Venice Film Festival
00:15where the film received a 17-minute ovation.
00:17It was 18 and a half.
00:20So that is an amazing reception, but I wonder, what do you do during an 18 and a half minute
00:28standing ovation, and is it awkward at all to receive that kind of response?
00:34It's a funny thing.
00:35It's a very good question, because there are ovations and there are ovations, and it's
00:42a bit of a ritual now, particularly at Venice, the long ovation.
00:47It's an old tradition.
00:49People used to actually employ clacks, pay people to stand and do a lot of clapping.
00:55In opera, it's a whole thing.
00:58I don't know whether that actually happens in Venice, but it feels like it's become.
01:03People bring out timers in Venice, and they brought out a timer for us, but this time
01:08I have to say it felt really particular, because I don't know, it was Pedro.
01:12It felt like it was really personal and that the audience were really wanting to love him
01:19and send him a loving message.
01:22It was really relatively easy.
01:25It's always tricky for some people, and I'm one, to stand up in public and have a light
01:31on you, but if you're standing next to Pedro, it's all right, because you know that actually
01:35it's all about him.
01:37I was just happy to clap along with everybody else.
01:40I know this is your second time working with Pedro, but when did you first enter his orbit?
01:45How long had you been trying to work with him before?
01:50I can tell you he entered my orbit when I was, I think, a student in the 80s.
01:56I saw Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown was the first of his films I saw, and I immediately
02:02became a complete worshiper and saw everything afterwards, so that's a good 20 years of being
02:10a devotee.
02:12I met him a couple of times in rather mad scenarios, in social situations.
02:20In fact, in Hollywood, of all places, where we both were sort of standing on the outside,
02:24the periphery of a Hollywood party that was like something out of South Park, you know,
02:30Eliza Minnelli was over here, Brad Pitt was over there, and everybody in between, and
02:34Pedro and I found ourselves both independently standing, watching the spectacle, and then
02:39we caught each other's eye and kind of giggled a little bit, and that was our first moment
02:45of actual complicity.
02:47And then at a certain point, I spoke to him, and I said, listen, I'll learn Spanish, or
02:55make me a mute, but can I come and play with you?
02:59I never took it seriously, because I never thought it was ever going to be possible.
03:04But practically speaking, I entered his orbit when he asked me to play the human voice in
03:112020.
03:12Yeah.
03:14And when he's, I mean, he's such a master, he's done so many great films, but now he's
03:19working in English, and I wondered, was he, did you sense any anxiety or fear?
03:25He was clearly, and very honestly, very trepidatious about it.
03:29I think for years, for many years before he proposed the human voice, which was his first
03:36time in English, because, I think for two reasons, partly because his own fluency in
03:42English was less encouraging, but more than that, because it's not really about fluency
03:50in English, it's about finding a way to make his world in another place.
03:56And his world, even when it's in Spain, is not really in Spain, it's in his world.
04:04And I think it just took him a while to realize that he could make that world anywhere, and
04:09now he's made a film that's set in upstate New York, well, in New York state, rather.
04:17And yet it's not really that, it's Pedro's world, and the language that we speak is not
04:23really vernacular, everyday English, it's Pedro's speak, but happens to be in English.
04:30I say it's like he's always, his language is always on high heels, whatever the spoken
04:35language happens to be.
04:36He'll make a film in Farsi, and it'll be the same.
04:40This is a movie that deals with some very serious subject matter, mortality, issues
04:45of mortality, regret.
04:47What is the set like when you're doing this kind of material?
04:50Was it a very somber set, or was it not?
04:53It's sort of a rule of thumb, I find, with making films, particularly, that the subject
05:00doesn't really enter into it, ever.
05:04It's always a very relaxed environment, it doesn't really matter, I mean, I've made very
05:11frightening films that have been really very merry.
05:15This set was very calm and sweet and focused, but actually relaxed as well, and I don't
05:22know, when you're used to what you're doing for several weeks or months before, the shoot
05:27itself is just the sort of next bit, and you just fold into it, and you sort of move
05:34through it.
05:36What about working with Julianne Moore?
05:38You play lifelong friends.
05:39How did you kind of establish a rapport with her?
05:42What was she like as a scene partner?
05:44It was a real blessing, because we didn't know each other.
05:47We'd met each other a couple of times, and we didn't know each other at all.
05:51We could have known each other, we were exactly the same age, more or less, and we occupied
05:57all sorts of territories that the other had occupied, but we very, very quickly kind of
06:04fell into a rapport, and we knew what it would have been to have had that relationship.
06:12We both had the same idea about that kind of complicity and that kind of honesty, because
06:21they're able to be so open with one another and so trusting, and to respect one another,
06:27and it's a wonderful thing.
06:28I mean, I've also had the experience of catching up with people I haven't seen for 20 years,
06:34and you'll find yourself saying something like, oh, and then you got married, and how
06:38long did that last, and then you got divorced, okay, and you had how many children?
06:41These massive details about someone's life that you can just spend a couple of sentences
06:46on and then move through, because what you're really focusing on is the fact that you knew
06:51each other when you were 15.
06:54I know you were talking about sort of the subject matter doesn't always determine the
06:58attitude on the set, but does it make you think about things, like when you were doing
07:02a film like this, which is so much about death and mortality, did it make you think about
07:07your own mortality any differently?
07:09It did, absolutely.
07:10I mean, the whole proposal for me was a very rich one.
07:15I've been privileged to be in the situation that Julianne Moore occupies, the Ingrid,
07:24because her character is called Ingrid, the Ingrid position, several times in my life.
07:29It's a privileged position, I say.
07:30I really find it's been a blessing.
07:33I've yet to be in the Martha position, the position that I occupy, but I've thought a
07:39lot about how important it is to bear witness in a respectful way.
07:45So, to put myself in the situation that Martha's in, and to see Julianne putting herself into
07:53the situation that I've been so many times, felt like a real honor, and had a kind of
08:02ease to it, because at the end of the day, all we're doing is using our imagination,
08:06and it's not that exotic to imagine being in that situation, even if you haven't at
08:12our age, even if you haven't been in that situation.
08:15It's only just around the corner, or in the room next door, and so it was just a privilege
08:23to be able to just mull on it, feel it, feel the edges of it, and sort of familiarize ourselves
08:31with it.
08:32I think it's, and I hope that that is something that the film will do for people, to just
08:37spend, you know, it's less than two hours with this story, with these women who are
08:42negotiating these feelings.
08:45I hope that it'll contribute some kind of ease, and maybe go some way to reduce people's
08:52fear about this, the delusion that we can all avoid it.
08:58You know, this film is also definitely about euthanasia, and I think euthanasia is only
09:02legal in less than a dozen countries.
09:04I wonder what kinds of debates you're hoping this film will maybe inspire, and did it make
09:10you think differently about that?
09:12Well, in the first case, I would like to suggest we are not actually dealing with euthanasia
09:17at all, and we're certainly not even dealing with suicide.
09:22We're dealing with death with dignity, dying with dignity.
09:28It's a very different thing.
09:30It's not euthanasia we're talking about, because we're not talking about anybody doing anything
09:34to anybody else.
09:36We're talking about somebody taking their own living and their own dying into their
09:41own hands, and having agency over the course of their whole life experience, and yes, it's
09:48true that around the world there are varying approaches, there are varying laws.
09:55Our film is set in New York State.
09:57At the moment, there are 10 states in America where it's possible for death with dignity
10:02to be actioned by medical practitioners, or rather with the help of medical practitioners.
10:11New York State is not one of these states, and so Martha has to take a different action.
10:18She has to go around it in an illegal way, or a way that is currently illegal, and so
10:24Julianne's character, as her support, is dicing with a criminal scenario, and one of
10:35the things that we wanted to look at is the humane aspect of this, I would suggest, inhumane
10:42situation for both women.
10:45I think it's a debate that's bubbling to the surface all over the world at the moment,
10:50and I welcome the debate.
10:51I think the more clear-eyed and the more undelusional we are about the fact that it's not just unlucky
11:00or unclever people who die, it's all of us, the wiser we'll be able to be.