Ingrid protests, but eventually relents—she understands her duty to her friend, but she’s also aware of the stakes, which include potential criminal charges if the police become aware of her prior knowledge of Martha’s intentions. They travel up, but then immediately have to return to New York when Martha misplaces the pill—in a heart-pumping sequence they turn her apartment upside down in search of it. (To order another illegally, she says, would be far too difficult.) When Ingrid locates it, in an envelope scrawled with the word “Goodbye,” you wonder if she’ll hand it over—but she does.
Over the next few days, back in their new country home, the pair lay out their ground rules: Martha insists that Ingrid should try to enjoy herself (though not write about their experience, lest the police find it—though, naturally, she does), and wait until she’s ready. Then, Ingrid will find Martha’s cherry-red bedroom door closed, and that’ll be the confirmation that she’s gone.
There’s a kind of Hitchcockian dread in this portion of the story, especially the shots of Ingrid climbing up the stairs to check the position of the door again and again—but also a welcome dose of morbid humor. Martha speaks of wanting to have sex with a mutual friend, Damien (Severance’s John Turturro), again—a shared lover from their past, with whom Ingrid is still in touch. Ingrid also goes to the gym, and is overcome to find herself breathless and haggard, suddenly concerned about her own mortality, too. In one of my favorite sequences, Ingrid sees the door is closed and promptly vomits and cries, but then a pale and ghostly Martha, dressed in white, comes downstairs, saying she’d opened a window and the breeze had blown it shut. Ingrid is furious.
Photo: © El Deseo, photo by Iglesias Más