infuses

As Variety recently reported, the film’s production was notoriously fraught with a host of ancillary issues, yet Fortune-Lloyd gamely infuses Epstein’s character with welcome senses of daring and vulnerability.

In short, the once-disturbing premise of the dystopian drama/dark comedy now infuses me with calm.

But Vera, the character, is far more than that, and not just because Blethyn infuses her with such a captivating mix of slovenliness and precision, prickliness and empathy.

She always infuses comedy into her characters but had been itching to do something that wasn’t just comedy.

That acceptance of the unknowable infuses “The Room Next Door,” Almodóvar’s first English-language feature, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and is one of his most melancholy yet quietly hopeful works.