Pedro Almodóvar fans may be wrongfooted by the writer/director’s first full-length English-language feature, an atypically austere entry in his canon that’s nevertheless as vivid and haunting as much of his other work.
Adapting Sigrid Nunez’s novel What Are You Going Through, Almodóvar examines friendship and death via two reconnected ex-colleagues: successful author Ingrid (Julianne Moore) and war correspondent Martha (Tilda Swinton). Martha is battling stage-three cervical cancer and wants a 'good death', so asks her friend to accompany her to an upstate New York rental for reading, relaxing and, ultimately, euthanasia, using a pill sourced on the dark web.
