Almodovar back at Venice with stars Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton

A meditation on death and friendship set in New England, "The Room Next Door" sees regular Almodovar collaborator Swinton as a war correspondent suffering from terminal cancer, with Moore as her friend, a successful novelist who agrees to be at her side in her final moments. Actor John Turturro completes the leading trio in the film that translates into English what the director has been developing for more than a decade in his native language -- an increasingly melancholy cinema prone to analysing the fear of death or physical decline.