Neither Sanchinarro nor Aranjuez: this is the majestic mansion where the last Pedro Almodóvar film was shot

The levels of expectation generated by the latest film from Pedro Almodóvar are very high, especially after its success at the Venice Film Festival, where it was awarded the Golden Lion. The Room Next Door is the first film in English by the Manchego filmmaker and after this triumph, it will be released in theaters on October 18th.

It is starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton and follows two women who were close friends in their youth. They both worked at the same magazine, but one of them became a novelist of autofiction and the other started working as a war reporter. Life circumstances separated them and, after many years without contact, they meet again in an extreme, yet strangely sweet situation.

Although the film marks several milestones in Almodóvar's career, who is already a legendary director in our country and around the world, the truth is that the director wanted to stay in Spain to shoot his latest film.

Specifically, the filming of The Room Next Door took place at the Szoke house, one of the most iconic buildings in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, although without overshadowing the imposing monastery ordered to be built by Philip II.

Constructed between 2018 and 2020 based on the plans of architects María José Aranguren and José González Gallegos - the founding members of the Aranguren + Gallegos studio-, the Szoke house is the main setting of the film and serves to place the story in New York and in the Woodstock forest. Although in reality the story did not leave Spanish borders.

The Szoke house

According to Arquitectura Viva magazine, "Itis precisely in a special enclave of this landscape halfway natural and halfway artificial - the so-called La Herrería forest on the south slope of Mount Abantos- where this house is situated, which fits into the terrain along a north-south axis and fragments into small volumes to soften its presence in the delicate area. Working with scale is one of the ways in which the construction dialogues with the surroundings; the other is the search for favorable orientations."

On the other hand, it has been described how "on one side the house opens to the south to take advantage of solar radiation during the long winters, on the other it bends towards the northeast in search of the gentle and fresh breezes that come from the forest and that during the summer enter the rooms with their pleasant pine scent."

Taking into account that locations play a fundamental role in situating a story, the Szoke house is without a doubt the ideal place to immerse ourselves in the director's narrative, partly because it is a fantastic location surrounded by greenery and also due to its fantastic library. Whatever it was that caught Almodóvar's attention when choosing it, it is a fact that this building is already part of a legendary artistic trajectory.

*This article has been automatically translated using artificial intelligence