Art buffs are lapping up the Bloomsbury Group references in the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar’s latest film The Room Next Door, starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton.
Moore plays a writer called Ingrid who outlines her academic credentials to her friend Martha, saying: “I’m doing research on the painter Dora Carrington and her intense relationship with the writer Lytton Strachey.” But Moore has made a pronunciation faux pas.
“Ingrid’s character can’t have got too far with her research as she keeps calling ‘Stra-key’ rather than pronouncing him as ‘Stratch-ee’,” says Simon Martin, the director of Pallant House Gallery in Chichester.
All is forgiven, though, as the film happened to hit the screens the same time as Pallant House opened the first exhibition on Carrington in 30 years (Dora Carrington: Beyond Bloomsbury, until 27 April 2025). “You’d think it was all planned or meant to be,” Martin quips.
