An Aesthetic of Death and the Color Red in Pedro Almodovar’s Film The Room Next Door,
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37130/qjpwt276Keywords:
Pedro Almodóvar, melodrama, the color red, beauty, aesthetic of deathAbstract
This essay discusses a change in the aesthetic of film director Pedro Almodóvar, as „shown in his latest film, The Room Next Door. The change consists mainly in distancing himself from certain means specific to melodrama or likely to be part of the arsenal of this genre. For decades, his so vivid chromatic palette played an important part in associating his films with melodrama. The primary, saturated colors, and especially his red gave the already temperamental characters and their actions and frequently shocking plots an extra dose – or should we say overdose? – of passion, which placed them in a dangerous proximity to melodrama. Inevitably, this essay will also explore the relationship between this new aesthetic of color and the film’s main topic: death. And not death as such, but death in a form that generated (over)heated discussions in contemporary society: euthanasia. Almodóvar’s view of death and euthanasia is reflected in the film’s poetics, in the use of colors, especially red. So, we are going to follow this red thread, as it interacts with other colors in order to stress the film’s message and the filmmaker’s means to create beauty, to create an “aesthetic of death”.
References
Eisenstein, S. (1957) The Film Sense, Edited and trans. by Jane Leyda, New York: Meridian Books.
Almodóvar, P. (2025) The Last Dream, Trans. by Frank Wynne, London: Vintage / Penguin Random House.
Sánchez-Arce, A.M. (2020) The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Brooks, P. (1985) The Melodramatic Imagination, New York: Columbia University Press.
Holtzschuhe, L, (2011) Understanding Color, 4th edn, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken.
Pramaggiore, M., Wallis, T. (2011) Film. A Critical Introduction, 3rd edn, London: Laurence King Publishing.
Akkaya, A., Pedro Almodóvar: Red is life and death; you can’t ask for more, Available at: ttps://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pedro-almodóvar-red-life-death-you-cant-ask-more-ada-semra-akkaya-yl6ve/ (Accessed 7 November 2024).
Bradshaw, P. (2024) „Almodóvar’s English-language debut is extravagant and engrossing”, The Guardian, Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/oct/23/the-room-next-door-review-almodovars-english-language-debut-is-extravagant-and-engrossing (Accessed 13 November 2024).
Canfield, D. (2025) Vanity Fair, Available at: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/the-room-next-door-pedro-almodovar.
Davenas, L. (2015) La Chromophagie d’Almodovar, 27 March, Available at: https://lemacinema.hypotheses.org/1040. (Accessed 7 November 2024).
Lévesque, F. (2024) Available at Ledevoir.com. (Accessed 5 November 2025).
Lévesque, Fr, «The Room Next Door»: amies jusqu’à la fin et au-delà, Le Devoir, 2025, Janvier 10. Available at https://www.ledevoir.com/culture/cinema/831376/critique-cinema-the-room-next-door-amies-jusqu-fin-dela (Accessed 7 November 2024).
Wilkinson, A. (2024) The New York Times, A Life Worth Leaving, Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/19/movies/the-room-next-door-review.html (Accessed 3 December 2025).
Arnheim, R. (2011) Arta şi percepția vizuală. O psihologie a văzului creator, Trad. Ionescu, Fl., cu prefața autorului, Iași: Polirom.
Goethe, J.W. Von (1995) Teoria culorilor, Trad. Panaitescu, V., Iaşi: Princeps.
Miller, J, (2025) The Passion of Pedro Almódovar. A Self-Portrait in Seven Films, New York: Columbia University Press.
