CinemaClown
Enigmatic at first, The Skin I Live In (also known as La piel que habito) peels its layers one by one, for it is mysterious during its first act, delivers a shocking jolt in the middle when all the scattered dots are connected, and culminates on a tragic & heartbreaking note in the finale to finish as one psychological thriller that's exquisitely crafted & expertly told.The story of The Skin I Live In follows a plastic surgeon who's managed to create a synthetic skin that can withstand any kind of damage. Unbeknownst to the outside world, his patient is a young woman whom he's kept captive in his secluded estate over the years. As the plot moves forward, the events that led him on the path of his current obsession are revealed.Written & directed by Pedro Almodóvar, this is my first stint with his works and although the story seemed to be headed nowhere at first, the mystifying aura of it was able to keep the interest alive long enough before the secrets are unveiled, and ultimately leaves a positive impression when it's all over. Themes of obsession, identity, sexual violence & revenge are tackled & finely explored.The images brim with a piercing clarity and the entire film is gorgeously photographed from start to finish. Camera is effectively utilised and whether it's calm or chaotic scenes, it retains its still & silent operation. Editing is finely carried out for the most part although there are a few times when a scene lingers on for longer than required. As for the background score, it absolutely bleeds when it's supposed to.Coming to the performances, the cast consists of Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Marisa Paredes & Jan Cornet, and everyone plays their part dutifully. Banderas is in as the plastic surgeon whose obsession with his only patient originates from a past tragedy. Anaya is terrific as the mysterious & volatile patient, Paredes maintains a firm control over her character while Cornet's part is far more vital to the plot than it looks.On an overall scale, The Skin I Live In is perplexing & frustrating at first but begins to make sense once all the pieces of the puzzle find their respective spots and form a unified whole. A gripping, thrilling & scarring experience, with elements of horror & sci-fi thrown into the mix, The Skin I Live In is an end result of restrained direction from Almodóvar & honest performances from its faithful cast, and is definitely worth a watch.
MisterWhiplash
The Skin I Live In would possibly be even more cold and disturbingly off-the-charts as far as where it goes to if not for a news story this past week involving a convicted rapist on the Stanford University campus, Brock Turner. I couldn't help but think about him while watching this movie, and it had to do with how we view victims and predators. There's not much, if any, sympathy or perhaps empathy for Turner (outside of, on the opposite side, perhaps, Turner's father who brought a lot of ire through his own comments, look them up if you're reading this long after the fact), and this is in large part thanks to the fact that the man was tried and convicted and that the victim (still leaving herself unnamed) had a heartfelt and harrowing description in court about her ordeal. And yet at the end of the day the conversation turned to how unfair it was that Turner only got 6 months in jail (out in 3). Some might say prison is still prison. But is it? How do we judge punishment? Or, for that matter, revenge, or justice? Tough questions all around, and asking how you feel is different depending on the person.This movie deep down deals with questions like this in a way that is about as honest as Almodovar can get, and yet it's all in the framing of a full-boned genre picture. This isn't expected from a director who in the 21st century has made mostly dramas involving women in melodramatic and often (deliriously/ravishingly) high-volume situations as far as where it goes to. Sometimes this can lead to camp. This is a case where Almodovar is out to be serious as he can be, and in its way it lends itself to body science fiction and horror (one might want to reach out to Cronenberg, but the one that I, as many other critics, go back to is Franju's Eyes Without a Face, also about recreating a loved one through the power of the outside).It's a story that, in the best compliment I can pay the film, does tell a full *story*, not simply a situation. How it tells it may be questionable in that it doubles back in time for a large portion of it when, one wonders, if it was told in a straightforward manner if it would show more of the logical gaps. Clearly it's meant to build up the mystery and intrigue of the first act: a woman is in a room that she can't get out of, being held by a doctor running experiments on her skin (Elena Anaya and Antonio Banderas respectively), as he's on the cusp of a great-new-big discovery involving a new form of skin that can block mosquitoes and whatnot. But who *is* she? There's one piece of (odd) almost comedy that is actually rather dark and terrifying thriller-drama territory near the end-of-act-1 mark involving a character in (no joke) a tiger costume. Other than that, this is the most serious I've seen Almodovar, where he treats all of this with the somber tone that Hitchcock brought to something like Vertigo, only there's a coldness to much of the film (at least the first and third parts) that it almost becomes kind of suffocating.This isn't to decry the performances though as the two leads are astounding. Really, they dig in to these characters and of course any woman worth her salt as an actress in an Almodovar film comes off better than in 10 other movies. What it comes down to is... well, what there is dramatically, I don't mean philosophically or morally one can read from the themes, aside from the surface shocks: when we flash back we find out that the doctor's daughter was sexually assaulted by a young man (there's actually two sexual assaults in the film, fairly graphic, and perhaps in Almodovar's mind one shouldn't shy away from showing it sometimes, fair enough), and the doctor got his form of revenge by kidnapping the guy as his daughter went insane and killed herself (this is following the death of her mother, the doctor's wife, this told in a clunky bit of exposition made to be 'deep' as it's over a fire)... but it goes from one thing to another until... well, you ever see Oldboy? It's that kind of f***ed-up reveal, if you can catch my drift by now.So I do think that there are things to think about, real legitimate real-world effects, of what Almodovar brings up here, even extending into, arguably, what it means to be transgender - what if it happens to be not some joyous occasion but a horrific nightmare without escape? I think all of the ideas are in place and how everything is shot and designed is spot on. But the emotion feels drained somehow, like it should be less dark and depressing and a little more, well, crazy tiger-costume-man. It IS a full-on Almodovar film, and a misfire by him is still a helluva lot more intriguing and aesthetically satisfying (and of course truly sexy) than many other films in the past several years, but a misfire nonetheless.
