Actor : Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Jan Cornet, Marisa Paredes, Roberto Álamo,
Running Time : 117 minutes
Customer Reviews
By
Whitt Patrick Pond "Whitt" (Cambridge, MA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)(REAL NAME)
The most important thing I can tell you about Pedro Almodóvar's film, The Skin I Live In (original Spanish title: La piel que habito) is that you should avoid as much as possible knowing anything about it beyond the most basic setup before seeing it. This is one of those cases where spoilers truly can rob you of the full experience of a film. I say this as someone who went into the movie knowing little about it beyond the fact that Pedro Almodóvar directed it and that it h ad to do with a plastic surgeon obsessed with a mysterious female patient. And that really is the best way to see it.Adapted from Thierry Jonquet's novel Tarantula (original French title: Mygale) by Pedro Almodóvar and his brother Agustín Almodóvar, The Skin I Live In is a complex and, as the background layers are peeled away through revelation, deeply disturbing and chilling film. It begins in the present day where we see Robert Legard (Antonio Banderas), a prominent plastic surgeon and medical researcher who, because of the tragic death of his wife in a fiery auto accident several years earlier, is obsessed with creating a new kind of skin superior to the skin we're born with, one that is not only both tougher and more resistant to burning and injury but also heals quicker and with little to no scarring. In his mansion, Dr. Legard has a special patient under his private, personal care, a young woman named Vera (Elena Anaya), on whom he is trying his ne w skin out. Our first impression is that Vera is a burn victim that Legrand is caring for, but it quickly becomes clear that Vera is more prisoner than patient. But just who is Vera? And how did she come into Legrand's rather questionable 'care'? And why does she so strongly resemble Legrand's dead wife?As in so many his films, The Skin I Live In has many of Almodóvar's almost trademark themes running all through it: complex familial relationships; the intertwining of family and personal secrets; the nature of desire, brutality and obsession; the lengths to which individuals can and will go; how actions can have the most unexpected and sometimes devastating consequences, and how, ultimately, we can never escape our pasts.The performances are pitch perfect, most particularly Antonio Banderas' controlled and controlling - and casually chilling - Legard, who has his mansion wired so that he can observe his 'patient' from almost any part of the house, and Elena Anaya's Ve ra with her perfect face and body and the haunted eyes that peer out from the skin she lives in, always aware that she is being observed. Added into the mix - and subtly working in other elements from classic standards of horror - are Marisa Paredes's Marilia, Legard's old housekeeper who serves as a kind of matronly Igor to Legard's Victor Frankenstein, fiercely loyal but openly disapproving; Roberto Álamo's Zeca, a brutal criminal on the run who serves as a kind of Hyde to Legard's Jekyll - lust, rage and animal cunning to Legard's cool controlled calculation. And last but not least, Jan Cornet's Vicente, a callow young fool whose impulsive self-indulgence triggers a chain of events with consequences more dire than he could imagine. All of whom are bound to each other in ways known and unknown.The only reason I rate this four stars instead of five and call it a near-masterpiece instead of an all-out masterpiece is in how the final acts play out. After taking the vie wer through a series of ever deeper and increasingly disturbing revelations, Almodóvar seems to settle for what I felt was a disappointingly conventional resolution. But that said, the film still stands out for all of the unexpected places it did take you before that slip back into the expected. There may be times when you'll think you've seen this movie before and you know what's going on, but I assure you, you haven't and you won't until the revelations have been made.Highly recommended for any fan of Almodóvar's and for anyone else who likes well-crafted films that really push the boundaries.
By
M. K. Rhodes "Cvalda" - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
**NOTE** Beware reviewers here who reveal major spoilers because they didn't like the film. Full appreciation of this film requires knowing next to nothing about it going in.Don't let the awful trailer dissuade you: Almodovar delivers the best film of 2011, and more than makes up for the disappointing BROKEN EMBRACES. This is absolutely masterful filmmaking, with career best performances from Banderas and Elena Anaya, an incredible score, and the most shocking twist cinema has seen since the early 90s.
By
Ahmet Celebiler (Istanbul, Turkey) - See all my reviews
I am lucky to have seen this film after a visit to a Dali exhibition where I surveyed his Divina Commedia and the Dinner with Gala paintings.Almodovar's brush strokes are clean and dire ctly applied to the screen. His depiction of the characters are the same way. The sane and the insane occupy the same frames, acting their parts beautifully, with no exaggeration or understatement. But the undertones, the queezy feeling you get and the occasional desire you have to divert your eyes from the screen, hold your partners hand and to reassure her and yourself that her world is nothing like the one you are watching worms its way under your skin after the first few seconds and does not let go.When you look at Dali paintings you have distorted images and perfectly drawn people and you try to figure out the meanings of the distorted images. Here, in the film, you have perfectly drawn images, scenes, sets but you are on the lookout for the distortion that you know is hidden there. The distortion is internal to the people and to the script and to the sets and even the music (just try to dance to that music with that song) or the few instances of humor which we enjoyed much.Almodovar is definitely one of those who bears that torch of Spanish visual and written art, and carries on the tradition of the mixture of the natural and the not so natural occupying the same bodies.We did not fall in love with this film but watched it with awe, felt a great deal of stress afterwards and did not wish to speak about it. Now, I think it was because Almodovar said it all, and said it so well that the viewer has nothing else to add to that. I just wish I can find a Garcia Lorca play to watch soon to complete this trilogy.
By
carol irvin "carol irvin" (United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)(VINE VOICE)(REAL NAME)
If you like foreign movies, you will probably like this film. If you don't, I do not think this will convert you (unlike GIRL WITH DRAGON TATTOO). It is exactly what I expect from Spanish director Pedro Aldomavar. His lead, Antonia Banderas worked with him before he came to America and this is their first reunion in decades. They are a good pairing. We begin in the present with a plastic surgeon, Robert Legard (Banderas),. He is also a medical researcher who is constantly trying to create better skin because of his late wife who suffered hideous burns in a car crash. He was not able to give her better skin so he keeps trying to do it long after her death. Oddly he has a young woman patient, Vera, who stays in his mansion as sort of a trial patient. She is very beautiful and young. He experiments with his new skin attempts on Vera but he neve r actually mars her. In fact, he seems to be building Vera to be a duplicate of his late wife, except better. We are told that there is both a strain of madness that runs through Legard's family as well as a history replete with tragedy. Vera is tied up with both. In order to find out how, we flash back to six years earlier and see Legrand when his wife and daughter were still alive. That ends in tragedy and Legrand's penchant for madness starts twisting its way into his psyche as he finds himself alone.I thought it was very good but for those who are expecting something like NIP N TUCK, except in Spanish, this is about as far from that tv show as it is possible to be.
By
El Neurotransmisor - See all my reviews
Una de las peores películ as que he visto. Un guión horrible, actuaciones de opereta y dirección de aficionado. La fama de Almodovar impide que la crítica sea objetiva. Si esta película la firmase un director desconocido, nunca hubiese sido estrenada.
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