Cinematographer Edu Grau had his first big break at 27, when fashion icon Tom Ford brought Grau to the United States to shoot Ford’s directorial debut, A Single Man. The experience catapulted Grau into a career of impressive breadth, spanning films such as Buried, The Awakening, A Single Shot, Suite Française, The Gift, Suffragette, Boy Erased, The Way Back, and Passing. The range of his work demonstrates an uncanny ability to adapt to a director’s visual language while maintaining a style that enhances and elevates the story. Grau’s latest, Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar’s first English language film, The Room Next Door, took home the prestigious Golden Lion award at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, where Almodóvar was also presented with the festival’s Brian Award—an accolade given to films that highlight and enhance such values as rationality, respect for human rights, and the promotion of individuality, among others.
The Room Next Door stars Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore in a virtual two-hander, with support from John Turturro and Alessandro Nivola. Former colleagues Ingrid (Moore) and Martha (Swinton) worked together at Paper magazine in the 1980s. Separated by life’s circumstances, Ingrid became a novelist, while Martha became a war reporter. Having spent their careers writing about and surrounded by death, the two reconnect later in life and find themselves in a sensitive and oddly touching situation. Largely in contrast to the film’s weighty themes, the cinematography paints a portrait of the beauty and hope surrounding us. In advance of Sony Pictures Classics’ release of The Room Next Door, Boxoffice Pro sat down with Grau to discuss the transportive nature of the theatrical experience and what it’s like to work with one of his cinematic heroes.
As a cinematographer, you’re something of a chameleon. You adapt seamlessly to the story you’re telling. How did you adapt to this story?
When the biggest filmmaker of your country, and one of the biggest of our time, calls you … It’s an honor. I found his story to be very sad and nostalgic. It’s an end-of-life sort of vibe, related to John Huston’s The Dead in some ways. As a cinematographer, you need to translate all those words into images. When talking to Pedro, he was very clear that he didn’t want a movie that felt too sad, too dark, or too depressing. What he wanted was to focus on vitality, on the energy and meaning of life. It was beautiful to translate the sad context surrounding the movie into poetic visual images that will add a sense of purpose and meaning to this world. It’s that combination that is important for me; what is happening is sad, but it’s about hope, the will to survive, and the beauty that surrounds us all. A very challenging job, but at the same time, an important and a beautiful one.
As you were preparing for this project, what were your conversations with Almodóvar like, and how did you collaborate on this vision?
Pedro has always been very vocal about what he likes. One of the things I did was to rewatch all his movies and reacquaint myself with his aesthetic and the way he tells stories. For me, it was very important to capture that. The most important thing was to make a very Almodóvar movie, because I like him and his filmography so much. It was important that I didn’t bring too much of my style into it. I wanted it to be as Almodóvar as possible, but he also wanted to be surprised. He wanted to add another level to his normal aesthetics and cinematic qualities. His instincts are very strong. His choice of colors obviously affects everything that’s in the frame.
I tried to get the best of his style, the best of the written words on the page, and focus on the characters as much as possible. I think one of the most beautiful things he said while prepping was, “I want the light to come from inside our characters.” A very poetic, very beautiful way of expressing it—but also very challenging and difficult to grasp what that was, exactly. The characters are the centerpiece of his movies. That’s what he cares about the most. He wants the actors to shine, to be the center of the frame and have the light. All his words are always surprising, challenging, and full of poetry, in the same way that you hear them in his films.
From shooting the daytime sequences in Suffragette on Super 16 mm to using 35 mm for films like Buried, you’ve worked in a variety of formats. How do you choose the best format for a project—from film, to digital, to a mix of the two?
It was important for us to understand where Pedro was coming from and where we wanted to take this movie. We talked for a few months, and we did extensive tests prior to the start of shooting. Pedro is also, like I am, a very intuitive person who reacts to what is in front of them. He doesn’t want to talk about the conceptual side forever. He’s someone that likes testing and seeing it and reacting to what he sees. He has a very good eye for that. After a few tests, we settled on anamorphic lenses, because of the light fall-off of the lenses, how beautiful the actresses looked, and also that aspect ratio was important as well for us. These decisions and the lighting all came through in the tests and through knowing Pedro’s masterful filmography. It all kind of moved organically and found its place. We didn’t have preconceptions. You just have to try and test and learn and grow.
We discussed that with every member of the crew and with his production company, El Deseo, which is a big family. You learn, you grow, and you make decisions. I think it’s a beautiful process. At first we wanted to shoot on film, for example, but with Pedro’s way of shooting—he edits the day after he shoots. He likes to see monitors on set and take care of all the lighting and every single prop and piece of decor in the frame. So it makes sense for him to shoot on digital, although he likes the aesthetic of film. So we also tried to get it closer to film during post-production, but obviously it’s a digital film [The Room Next Door was shot on Alexa 35 with Panavision C series anamorphic lenses]. It uses all the good things about digital, I think.
I want to talk about the impact of color. How did you and your fellow collaborators ensure the rich, saturated color palette?
You are not going to change the reds or the greens or the yellows that he likes. He chooses everything very carefully. He had a six-month prep with the production designer, Inbal Weinberg, to choose the precise color of the walls and of every single piece of interior design in the shot. He crafts the set in a way that’s very shootable and the way he likes it. He wants the image to be as true to what he sees on the day, on the set, to the extent that color grader Chema Alba had an experience one day on a previous movie where they were struggling with a red that was on screen. At some point, Pedro just said, “Let’s bring the red door here. So we can look at it and compare it to what we’re seeing on the screen, because I’m not seeing the same color on screen that I saw on that door.” This precision, this obsession, this care for color; it’s a thing that you’re not going to get out of with Pedro. You need to be very, very truthful to the colors that he choses and that he likes, because that’s big for him. Don’t play with Pedro’s colors [laughs]. Pedro has the last word on every single color.
Painter Edward Hopper is directly referenced in the film, and the influence of his work is felt in the compositions as well. Do art and fixed images often inspire your work?
Yeah, absolutely. While thinking about translating the Pedro Almodóvar aesthetic and world, we found the inspiration of Edward Hopper. Pedro’s world has always been centered in Spain, but with this film, he’s suddenly transported to America. It all came to us very naturally. Basically, if Pedro lived in America, his colors would probably be closer to Edward Hopper, in the way that you see their light and contrast are very similar, and the strength of the colors are very similar. The color palette is slightly different; Hopper is probably a bit more pastel in his approach to color compared to Pedro. That kind of connection between Pedro and Hopper was very interesting for Pedro’s first English-language film. We took Hopper as an inspiration in lighting and in composition for sure. From day one; and I hope it shows.
It does, and it allows a lot of room for the audience to breathe and contemplate. How was the language of the camera perhaps different here than from other projects you’ve worked on?
Pedro likes his camera to be on the dolly, but not necessarily on the move too much. He only likes to move the camera when strictly necessary for narrative purposes. He’s not that keen on handheld, although we did some handheld on some of the flashbacks. The camera was a lot more static in this film than I’ve been for a while. It’s quite interesting, as well, to concentrate on the composition, on the actresses’ performances, and just let it play and let it breathe. It’s a beautiful touch. I think it comes with experience, maturity, and being a master of your craft—that confidence of a filmmaker that has done a lot of movies and knows what he wants.
He will shoot only two or three takes, sometimes even one, and we will move on. Or we’ll shoot the wide shot and it will not be a master of the whole scene, we might only shoot two sentences and then “Cut!” Tilda and Julianne would be like, “What’s happening?” And Pedro would say, “We have you. We don’t need anything more than these two sentences on this wide, because I’m going to cut to these in this moment and then cut back to the close-ups.” He knows exactly what he needs, what he wants, and what he’s looking for in his films. I think that shows in the way he makes films; he’s very economical. He’s very to the point, quick at shooting and at editing.
That’s when you know that you’re working with a master, right? Hitchcock used to talk about working that way, as if he’d already finished the film in his mind.
Exactly, absolutely. Pedro also has the benefit of writing his own scripts. He’s been working with them for months, and he knows every single line. He’s been cutting them and creating them in his head for a while. So when it comes to shooting and to editing, he’s already there in his mind. He knows how the pieces work, one after each other. It’s very interesting to see; it’s a confidence I’ve never experienced and a way of working that is surprising in every sense: to work with one of your heroes and see the way he works and the way he’s created this production company to surround himself with, that works for him in the way he likes and the way he knows he does the best work. That’s beautiful and unique.
Speaking of beautiful and unique, you once talked about experiencing Julianne Moore’s magic for the first time through the lens while making A Single Man. You’ve had several experiences in your career of reteaming with talent like Rebecca Hall and Joel Edgerton. What’s that process like for you coming back and working with collaborators whom you’ve shot previously?
It’s always a beautiful thing to work again with people you love and you admire. The three that you mentioned, Rebecca, Joel, and Julianne, are fantastic professionals, great at their craft, and just good human beings. Working with them is a joy, and I believe that filmmaking is teamwork. We all depend on each other. We all make each other better or worse, and I think those three people that we mentioned, they are so good. One of the reasons why they are so good, and it shows in the movies they do, is because they also collaborate. They are great at working with the crew, with the director, the head of photography, the camera operators, and every single person on the team. That makes everyone better, and I think we sometimes forget that. Teamwork is such an essential piece of the puzzle in making a good movie. It’s always a joy to work again with incredible people who are great at their job and good people to be around.
Sony Pictures Classics is really getting behind the film. What’s that like for you to know that audiences will get to experience your work and this story in a theater, on a big screen?
I’m very excited for people to see it on the big screen, because I think it’s a movie that transports you to a world by a master like Pedro Almodóvar. I think he’s a visionary filmmaker. It’s masterful the way that Pedro talks about this decaying world. He brings us into the decaying life of these characters, but he is capable of finding the joy, the beauty, and the meaning to all of it. That experience—to go to the cinema and come out revitalized and find that beauty in life is so necessary—it’s one of the biggest and most beautiful experiences you can have at a cinema. I’m very much looking forward to audiences enjoying it—and on a big screen if they can. The community, the sense of “we are all in this together,” is important as well, for the movie and for the world.
Sony Pictures Classics is doing a great job, and they’ve always done great work for Pedro. I’m very excited to see what audiences feel and what they think. It’s very necessary and very beautiful to have an experience like this. It’s good when cinema can transform people’s lives. I hope this story can do something similar, because there are memorable moments and images that I think will get stuck in people’s minds and hearts for a while. It’s a beautiful approach to the somewhat depressing world that we’re living in right now. He brings light and joy and humanity and sorority, all those things that make life meaningful.
Growing up, what was a favorite or memorable moviegoing experience?
I keep close to my heart the fact that my dad discovered that he was falling in love with my mom at the movie theater. They were watching To Be or Not To Be and she was the one who was laughing the loudest. He thought, “I want to know that girl,” and that’s how they started dating. So cinema has always been in my life in one way or another. I kissed my wife for the first time using a line from my favorite movie. It’s kind of a beautiful thing when you create a narrative, a story based on the movies you love. Movies have always been in my life, and I hope they keep being there for the rest of it.
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