Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door” is one of those films that needs time to open up, like a flower. Its early scenes, in which former journalism colleagues Ingrid (Julianne Moore) and Martha (Tilda Swinton) rekindle their once-close friendship as Martha faces terminal cancer, feel a little flat, a bit explain-y. You wonder if Almodóvar, in his first English-language feature, is coasting on his stars’ remarkable faces rather than the script (and, admittedly, these two could sell anything), and you get distracted noticing the trademark Almodóvar pops of red everywhere: a car, a bedroom door, a strawberry, a perfectly applied slash of lipstick.

And then, maybe about a third of the way through, you’re pulled in, in that uncanny way Almodóvar often has of making something seemingly ordinary suddenly soar. Moore and Swinton take us on a journey of life and death and poetry, with those beautiful ending lines from James Joyce’s novella “The Dead” — “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead” — echoing through the film as a leitmotif. By its end, “The Room Next Door” has become gently transcendent, with a touching echo of Swinton’s performance in “The Eternal Daughter.”

Set initially in a contemporary and beautifully art-directed Manhattan (this is a world in which everyone’s apartment looks like a gallery installation), the film mostly focuses on Martha’s decision to end her own life, and her request that Ingrid help her do so — not directly, but by being in “the room next door” when it happens. The story unfolds slowly, given melodramatic beauty by Alberto Iglesias’ vinelike, Bernard Herrmann-esque score, but grounded by the two women at its center. Moore, whose Ingrid agonizes over what she’s been asked to do, is all kindness and softness; her voice sounds silken, and she emanates goodness. Swinton, who in an early close-up seems to remarkably create her own light, is frail and ghostlike — a woman slowly slipping away, yet still astonishingly vivid. Isolated in a borrowed house upstate for the film’s second half, the two of them talk — about work, love, sex, time, life, death — and walk, almost becoming one person.

Ultimately, “The Room Next Door” is as much about love as it is about death — not the romantic kind of love, but the sort in which two friends hold each other up (quite literally, as Martha takes Ingrid’s arm during their walks) and give each other what they need, selflessly. Its final, magical moment finds uncanny beauty in sadness. It’s a film about what it means to be next to someone, and about choosing acceptance and finding peace with it. As Ingrid says, in her soft voice, “there are lots of ways to live inside a tragedy.”

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'THE ROOM NEXT DOOR'

3.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for thematic content, strong language, and some sexual references)

Running time: 1:47

How to watch: Now in theaters

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