So there they are sitting next to each other at the festival press conference, and the most important thing must remain unsaid, that is the deal. Brad Pitt in dove blue, George Clooney in light grey, both apparently unaffected by the oppressive Venice sultriness of these first days in September. Clooney jokes about age, he repeatedly calls Pitt an old man, “we are on the decline,” he says, and by that he also means the entire star system, of which the two have turned up here as the no longer very young leaders. But between the lines, and in the aura that surrounds them, you can sense the reason for their being here and also for the existence of their new joint film, which they have also produced together: friendship.
This sets a leitmotif for this part of the Venice Festival, which Pedro Almodóvar will continue in his new film. In it, it must be said how much friendship means in case of doubt, because it is a matter of life and death. But first, let’s talk about lighter things, namely “Wolfs”, the new buddy thing between George Clooney and Brad Pitt.
The title is a nod to the character Mister Wolf from Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction”, the crisis manager, Clusterfuck-Cleaner and body disposal guru, who was burned into the collective memory by Harvey Keitel’s portrayal thirty years ago. An unimpressed, extremely authoritative voice that gives crystal-clear instructions, even in the case of puddles of blood and brain splatters everywhere – many film fans have long wanted this ultimate father figure in his own film.
And now a light version of it is coming, not from Quentin Tarantino, but from the rather clever “Spider-Man” reboot helper John Watts. And as the majority of “Wolfs” already suggests – there is suddenly not only a Mister Wolf, but two. They are also called to the same body, to the same crime scene or accident scene. Which means the whole authoritative father thing goes out the window as soon as the two are forced to work together and behave like jealous teenagers.

That’s pretty funny, and a good vehicle for Clooney and Pitt, who each bring their own alpha male thing to the table to make the clash work. And you immediately sense that the two are made for each other, born friends, so much better together than alone. As the following complications prove – the body isn’t dead at all, kilos of cocaine have disappeared, extremely dangerous Albanians and Croatians are hunting for it. This is just an old-fashioned, hand-made New York action film. Actually, it’s a friendship film, the likes of which are rarely made anymore.
New York City, at least in the first part, is also the setting for that very different friendship in “The Room Next Door” by Pedro Almodóvar. After his short film forays into the English language, the Spanish grandmaster has now arrived at a full feature film, he has filmed Sigrid Nunez’s autofictional novel “What’s Missing You?” A writer and a journalist in the New York media scene, in addition to the finest observations, there is also a great deal of self-irony, gallows humor and intellectual arts of concealing emotions.
With Almodóvar, even a story about death develops a magical lightness
There is little of that left in Almodóvar’s adaptation, as one might think when listening to the first dialogues between Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton. The two have not seen each other for ages. Now one of them has terminal cancer, the other has found out about it and visits her, and the old intimacy is back immediately. But Almodóvar’s script expresses this very directly, without humorous or sarcastic evasive maneuvers. As is often the case in his work, he goes straight to the dramatic core of the situation.
So this is not a study of New York intellectuals and how they deal with the world, it is a study of Almodóvar characters and how they deal with death. And as is the case with great directors, this adaptation not only succeeds, it soon develops its own somnambulistic pull. Martha, Tilda Swinton’s character, is looking for a companion for her final days. She has obtained a suicide pill illegally and rented a modernist house in the woods near Woodstock. Would Sigrid go on holiday with her there – only to find her lifeless body one morning?
Sigrid, alias Julianne Moore, hesitates, but then she agrees. And the last days in this truly wonderful house, the uncertainty for the companion as to when it will all end, the unspoken agreement that there will be no more farewells apart from the plan once discussed – all of this weighs heavily on the pictures and yet, over time, gains a magical lightness, a certainty that everything will be right until the end.
And so something begins to float in a way that perhaps only Almodóvar can create. Even if everything that is spoken now has the utmost importance, even if a symphonic soundtrack underscores almost every word, so that the choir of forest birds that the two like to listen to in the morning can hardly stand alone acoustically – you get the feeling that everything has to be this way. This is a great choreography, a meditation, Almodóvar’s own reflection on death, which also includes the final words of James Joyce’s “The Dead”. This world and the next have long been linked by the time the final snow begins to fall.