There is a long line of admirers at Ingrid’s book signing. She has written about her fear of death. Among those waiting for an autographed copy is an old friend she hasn’t seen in some time. The friend tells Ingrid that a mutual friend Martha, a war correspondent whom Ingrid hasn’t seen in many years, is dying of cancer. As she bids her friend goodbye with the poise of a successful author, Ingrid’s expression belies conflict. Seeing this, the friend leans in, to insist that Ingrid call Martha.
If you think you’ve stepped into a remake of the 1977 autobiographical film, “Julia,” based on the resumption of what had been a girlhood friendship between the playwright Lillian Hellman and a friend who, when they re-engage, has become a World War II underground resistance asset, you’re not far from wrong. The tension between Ingrid and Martha, mitigated by sprays of mutual admiration, feels familiar, if 48 years later (and in a chromatic scheme that opens with lipstick in the shade of Mac’s “Russian Red.”)
[What follows could be taken as a spoiler, but while it is central to the plot, the film’s essence, its flavor, is released from how the latter-day relationship between the two women develops and reads.]
Martha (Tilda Swinton) has decided that it’s time to end her life and asks Ingrid to occupy the room next to hers on a random day in a random location when and where this will occur. Martha makes her argument. Her delivery is a degree shy of the polished sang-froid she has cultivated under fire. To Martha, the plan is perfectly reasonable. As a war correspondent, she thrived on the heroism she saw. Her chosen profession, however, required that she become an eyewitness to dying. Now, she wants to cheat her death of its agonies. Martha has read Ingrid’s book and knows of her friend’s phobia, but Ingrid is the only friend on a list of candidates who could not say no to Martha’s entreaty. The same sensibility that makes Ingrid empathic makes her the one friend Martha can count on. The relationship between the two friends interpolates into one orchestral tone poem.
The script erects a few bridges to nowhere, comprising plot off-ramps suggesting intrigue, but what a letdown when they fall out of the shot, never to resurface.
Why does Ingrid covertly pocket Martha’s diary, and then ask her permission to publish it? We wait with baited breath for Martha’s response, which ends up as the uncharacteristically tepid throwaway that Ingrid can do whatever she likes because, “I’ll be dead.” Why is Damian (John Turturro) who had been a robust sexual presence in both women’s histories, now a disparaging has-been, eviscerated by a disappointed academic career? If he is going to be Ingrid’s handholder, can’t he rise to the occasion with a triumph of the sweet over the bitter? Instead, he is sandbagged as an expository counterpoint to Ingrid’s transformation. It is to Damian that Ingrid reveals what she has discovered in herself—the nugget of organic zeal Martha’s example has helped her to refine into a faceted gem capable of penetrating the surface of things. One is reminded of the final scene in “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”
Almodóvar has built a brand by making one-off artistic choices. In this instance, he has chosen to cast Swinton as both Ingrid and her estranged daughter, Michelle. It’s a conceit. Though it may not have been intended to distract the viewer from focusing on the absence of weight in the scene between Ingrid and Michelle after Martha dies, it does. Swinton is so heavily made up to look youthful that what should be a regenerative ending stiffens under a shroud.
Whatever the weaknesses in the script, the acting is lovely. At the top of the film, Moore’s character Ingrid is terrified of death; yet, can fully commit to her friend’s ask, even as she finds that the prospect of discovering Martha’s corpse makes her vomit. Swinton’s character, who is fully committed to her plan to euthanize herself, nonetheless verbalizes her treasured life’s vignettes haltingly, all the while able to recognize in her behavior, a brittle mean streak, for which she apologizes. Turturro’s Damian, though soured on life, is gentle with Ingrid, more caring in his candor than perhaps she feels she wants him to be, or she should be entitled to. Now, having risen to conquer, she stands tall on her own two feet. The actors so fully enrich the medium they are handed that despite what’s missing from the script, the viewer feels bountifully satisfied when the credits roll.
Toba Singer