The Skin I Live In Review

Reviewed by James Cheetham
jamescheetham.jcc@gmail.com

http://www.subtitledonline.com/reviews/the-skin-i-live-in

The Skin I Live In, Pedro Almodovar’s lat­est cin­e­matic tale, is his usual genre bend­ing and gen­der twist­ing affair that weaves through a nar­ra­tive of a some­times myth­i­cal, other times all too human, scope that pounds through its run­ning time like only a mae­stro film­maker could orches­trate.

With a plot that can be dis­sected into three con­cise parts, which ini­tially fail to offer much of a link other than the cen­tral char­ac­ter, but then ulti­mately and dis­turbingly clash into place, The Skin I Live In charts the unset­tling dynamic between Anto­nio Bandera’s Madrid based scientist/doctor and his mys­te­ri­ous patient, Vera (Elena Anaya). It becomes evi­dent that Robert Ledgard (Ban­deras) has been using Vera as a human spec­i­men to uncover the depths sci­ence can reach in the field of face trans­plants and skin graft­ing, and events reach a frenzy when the son of Ledgard’s maid (Marisa Pare­des) makes an unwel­come and over-due appear­ance.
As the hulk­ing brute of a man intim­i­dates his way into the lav­ish home of Ledgard, which also houses his lab­o­ra­tory and Vera’s room/prison, rev­e­la­tions are unleashed as a con­se­quence of a har­row­ing sequence of vio­lence. This then leads us into an Almod­ovar sta­ple, a lengthy flash­back to six years prior which grad­u­ally unfolds the his­tory of Ledgard and Vera, even­tu­ally lead­ing back to the present day cat­a­stro­phe that becomes their rela­tion­ship…

Almod­ovar shows us once again that he is a mas­ter­ful sto­ry­teller, the nar­ra­tive tick­ing along immac­u­lately and fail­ing to bore for one sec­ond, as ele­ments of the plot slowly but beau­ti­fully unwind at a pre­cise pace. It allows room for the viewer to piece plot threads together, but still gives room for the shock of the final out­come, when it finally reveals itself. He imbues the film with a fan­tas­ti­cal ele­ment, in parts liken­ing the film to fairy­tale imagery. When the Zeca, the maid’s son, barges in and man­ages to tear at their dys­func­tional fam­ily unit of doc­tor, patient and maid, he is dressed as a tiger (hav­ing come straight from a car­ni­val) and trans­forms into the fero­cious beast rip­ping his way through the idyl­lic home and becom­ing the evil cat­a­lyst for what will soon develop.

Fur­ther con­no­ta­tions can be pulled from gothic lit­er­a­ture, with The Skin I Live In dis­play­ing obvi­ous par­al­lels with Mary Shelley’s Franken­stein, evolv­ing the film into a mod­ern day telling of the exper­i­men­tal crea­ture and his/her bat­tle with iden­tity and the need to have his/her love rec­i­p­ro­cated. In true Almod­ovar style then, The Skin I Live In becomes a story that toys with the bar­ri­ers of sex­u­al­ity and iden­tity, the issue of gen­der becom­ing the ulti­mate back­bone of the film dur­ing the final act.

Com­plet­ing the film is Almodovar’s usual grace­ful con­trol of the mise-en-scene, skewed angles, blaz­ing fires, cor­ri­dors back dropped with beau­ti­ful yet fore­telling colour­ful paint­ings. The room in which Vera resides is an art­work within itself, the walls scrawled with dates, times, mus­ing and draw­ings. Naked female forms etched onto the plain walls bare their gen­i­talia as they lack faces and instead have small houses placed on their necks instead of heads, an intri­cate detail that show­cases Vera’s inter­nal con­flict; a home­less indi­vid­ual whose main solace is a bro­ken mind. The music accom­pa­ni­ment is of impor­tance also; at times, reach­ing Hitch­cock­ian lev­els, as strings unset­tlingly wire through the score, the music coaxed in dur­ing moments when it is absolutely nec­es­sary and work­ing as part of the film, rather than sim­ply tacked on because it has to be.

While you could com­plain that it may not be a change of pace for Almod­ovar, as it fits into his usual for­mat of film­mak­ing and dances with the same themes that are found in his past efforts, The Skin I Live In is still a majes­tic film. At times, it becomes one of his most genre pieces, as it tus­sles with themes the genre of hor­ror is famous for, such as man’s for­age into the depths of what he can manip­u­late the human body into, but he always grounds it with a level of real­ism that skews it to the realms of a drama/thriller. Each char­ac­ter has a dif­fer­ent moral com­pass, and when you think you have found the vil­lain of the piece, fur­ther plot devel­op­ments cause judge­ments to be altered. Due to this, when the con­clu­sion arrives, it is bit­ter­sweet — you can sym­pa­thise with each char­ac­ter but also demor­alise then, mak­ing for a frus­trat­ing yet hyp­notic cli­max.

This sense of bewil­der­ment must also be attrib­uted to the cast, Ban­deras’ and Anaya’s efforts are as effec­tive as the script in cre­at­ing char­ac­ters who dove­tail through a sea of ambi­gu­ity — in the wrong hands, this would have come across as unbe­liev­able and far­ci­cal. Elena Anaya stands out espe­cially, saun­ter­ing through moments of tragedy and mis­trust, her eyes the mag­netic tether between the audi­ence and her char­ac­ter — a stand out scene being a flash­back to her wear­ing a black skin tight suit and a plas­tic mate­r­ial face mask, the only vis­i­ble fea­ture being her eyes as they mani­a­cally stare out as she attempts an escape.

As a film that skips between gen­res and isn’t afraid to lash out a bit of crim­son gore when needed, The Skin I Live In is not nec­es­sar­ily going to be a film that suits everybody’s tastes. It has a few graphic scenes that shock and plot points that shock even more, but any estab­lished fan of Almod­ovar is going to come away pleased, as will film fans who enjoy to be pulled along on an intel­li­gent and some­times mad­den­ing ride.

5/5