With the assisted dying debate in the news at the moment and MPs expected to vote on a bill to legalise it in England and Wales later this year, The Room Next Door is a timely addition to cinema schedules. Spanish movie maestro Pedro Almodóvar casts a compassionate, curious eye over one woman’s quest for a dignified death.

Based on Sigrid Nunez’s novel What Are You Going Through, this elegant, ethereal drama tells the story of Martha and Ingrid (Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore), friends and former colleagues who have fallen out of touch but who fondly reunite following Martha’s terminal cancer diagnosis. The pair reminisce and reflect on former lovers and Martha’s career as a war reporter as she faces a battle on a very different front, with Martha eventually asking Ingrid to accompany her on a life-ending getaway.

Winner of the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice International Film Festival, this is the great director’s first English-language feature and boasts familiar Almodóvarian elements like duality and mystery, while it bears particular comparison to his more melancholic, introspective works such as Pain And Glory. The palette, of course, remains as vivacious as ever, yet some of that Spanish passion and eccentricity are missed.

Nevertheless, the film benefits hugely from having two grand dames of Anglo-American cinema getting stuck into some agony and empathy, with Swinton (who starred in Almodóvar’s enjoyable 2020 short The Human Voice) especially mesmerising. If the soul-searching nature of the duologues can feel stagey and occasionally indulgent, the film gives serious consideration to some weighty themes and shows an endearing faith in the fortifying power of female friendships.

The Room Next Door is in cinemas from Friday 25 October.