Movie Review: The Skin I Live In
A startling and unpredictable foray into body horror and gender politics from Spanish film icon Pedro Almodóvar, The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito) is a technically flawless, emotionally distant thriller concerning a widowed doctor’s imprisonment and plastic surgical experiments on a young woman gradually being made to resemble his deceased wife with the aid of synthetic skin grafts. Antonio Banderas returns to the Almodóvar fold for the first time in decades in one of the most challenging roles of his career – his overfamiliarity to American audiences in commercial and family fare will not prepare them for his sinister, erotic, blank turn as Dr. Robert Ledgard, a genius physician performing cutting-edge, immoral surgery at his palatial home. For an actor grown comfortable in winking, charm-heavy roles, Banderas is marvelously sedate for his old mentor Almodóvar.
Only the doctor’s enabling mother/housekeeper Marilia (and later her scary criminal son Zeca) knows the truth of the captive woman housed upstairs – sheathed in a nude body stocking and gelatinous facemask with voyeuristic cameras on her at all times. Dr. Ledgard’s gorgeous captive Vera Cruz (Elana Anaya) lives with a devastating secret – a thing of great mystery, that when finally made clear late in the second act has to rank with one of the most offbeat reveals in cinema history. Most of the movie takes us back six years prior to the current events to slowly unfold how Ledgard’s wife and daughter have perished and the dark, ironic motivation that drives the mad scientist in his grotesque experiment.
Though brimming with the rigorous formalism Almodóvar has perfected since his career-shifting second breath starting with Live Flesh, continuing with his mastery of the female melodrama in All About My Mother and the Hitchcockian confidence of Bad Education (an ideal companion piece to The Skin I Live In), classy, art-heavy set design and familiar thriller tropes will do little to comfort older art house patrons who may bristle at the truly bizarre core themes emerging from this variation on the horror classic Eyes Without a Face (1960, Georges Franju). If this were an American film, audiences would scoff at the convenient plot machinations and leaps in logic; as a Spanish production the symbolic character sketches and grand guignol surrealism are more easily digested.
Bound to be considered a minor entry in the Almodóvar filmography, The Skin I Live In lacks an emotional core, but makes up for it with cinematic flourishes and a complexity that may not fully reveal itself until you see the movie again, knowing the spoilers which no good film fan would dare reveal.
Gregory Fichter
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