Revisiting Pedro Almodovar’s Oscar races in honor of ‘The Room Next Door’
Pedro Almodóvar is back with his first English-language film “The Room Next Door,” which is already making the rounds on the awards circuit. It won the coveted Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival, where it premiered last month. Starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, this movie is expected to be a contender at the upcoming 2025 Academy Awards, so let’s take a closer look at the filmmaker’s previous Oscar races for all of his Spanish films, including his individual win.
Even though Almodóvar technically has only two Oscar nominations to his name, he has been the selected recipient of many of his films for Best International Feature Film for Spain when they are cited in the category, due to the academy ruling. One of them is his breakthrough 1988 dark comedy “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” about an actress who is determined to find why her lover left her and ends up getting entangled in extreme scenarios involving his son and her best friend. This put Almodóvar on the Hollywood radar after winning the Golden Osella screenplay prize at Venice and the National Board of Review for Best Foreign Language Film, but the movie came up short at the Oscars to Bille August’s epic “Pelle the Conqueror” from Denmark.
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Eleven years later, Almodóvar’s next melodrama “All About My Mother” (1999) solidified his place as one of the most popular international directors and swept all the top international industry prizes, winning the Golden Globe Award, BAFTA Award, and Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, with the writer and director himself winning his own BAFTA for Best Direction. Considered one of his best, it tackles issues of existentialism, homosexuality, and gender identity as a mother comes to terms with the sudden death of her son and reunites with his other parent, a transgender person who never knew about him. Almodóvar accepted the Oscar as the director on behalf of Spain. Watch the clip below where presenter Penelope Cruz infamously shouts, “Pedro!”
He was able to finally take his own personal Academy Award three years later for “Talk to Her” (2002), a psychological film surrounding two men each caring for a comatose woman, with their relationship to them revealed in flashbacks. While the movie made Spain’s three-film shortlist that originated in 2001, it was ultimately not selected with the country opting instead for “Mondays in the Sun,” directed by Fernando León de Aranoa, which did not make the top five. However, Almodóvar was able to reap two nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, winning the latter category and finally nabbing his own statue. In addition, “Talk to Her” won the Globe and BAFTA for Best Foreign Language Film and Almodóvar took home his second BAFTA for screenplay.
His latest trip to the Oscars was for his 2019 drama “Pain and Glory,” starring Antonio Banderas as a physically declining film director recovering from the death of his mother. Making its debut at the Cannes Film Festival, it won Best Actor for Banderas and Best Soundtrack for composer Alberto Iglesias, and ultimately garnered two Oscar nominations for Best International Feature Film (the inception of the category name change) and Best Actor for Banderas. Furthermore, it gained international bids across all the precursors at the Golden Globes, Critics’ Choice, and BAFTA, in the year of the historic domination of another international film “Parasite.”
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Now he returns with “The Room Next Door,” adapted from the Sigrid Nunez novel “What Are You Going Through,” and starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore as friends who come together as one becomes terminally ill from cancer. One thing to note of Almodóvar’s films is that even if they are not selected to represent the country for the international film category, it still manages to get other Oscar mentions elsewhere. Take “Parallel Mothers” (2021) three years ago, where despite it not being picked in favor of another León de Aranoa movie “The Good Boss,” it still managed to reap nominations for its star Penelope Cruz in Best Actress and Iglesias for Best Original Score. Cruz also got her first Oscar nomination for Almodóvar’s “Volver” (2006) when the dramedy was not cited for Best Foreign Language Film.
This bodes well for “The Room Next Door” to get into various categories at the Oscars, now it has been reported that both actresses will vie in the lead category, with Swinton’s performance being cited by Owen Gleiberman of Variety as “worthy of comparison to the spirit and virtuosity of Vanessa Redgrave.” Moreover, Almodóvar has been praised for his themes of dying and balance of tones, with Stephanie Zacharek of Time calling it a “joyful movie about death.” With this being his first English-language film, there is opportunity for “The Room Next Door” to expand in many main categories including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for Almodóvar.
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