The Skin I Live In (La Piel que Habito) (8/10)

December 23rd, 2011

We can’t help it, I suppose. If communication is nine-tenths non-verbal, it’s only logical that we humans judge people by their appearance. Many’s the fashion that deliberately intends to shock or reveal, simply to make a statement. Some wear camouflage to draw attention to themselves. Pedro Almodóvar’s latest, a part-Frankenstein, part-obsession thriller, dares viewers to make assumptions based on appearance, and then laughs in your face.

Rules of spoilerdom are called in to play here: The Skin I Live In deserves to be seen and enjoyed with as little known as possible. Even saying that a film has a possibility of a twist is a spoiler, so you didn’t get that from me. I will try my best to just give you basic set-up details here, and hope for the best.

Main man Dr. Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas) tells a packed medical conference of his great crusade in life, facial recreations for burn victims. There have been nine such operations in the world, he says, and he’s been involved in three of them. His motivation for this is that his own wife was horribly burned in a car accident a few years before and, disfigured for life, she could no longer take it. Let’s face it, we all need a face.

Back at his remote, gorgeous villa, there is a girl named Vera. She’s not there of her own free will, it would seem. Her door is locked, no one save the doctor may enter the room, and her every move is observed by cameras. She wears an all-over body suit, flesh-coloured. Vera is played by the ever-gorgeous Elena Anaya, of whom I’ve waxed lyrical many times before on this website. Sensual in the extreme, she’s also the go-to gal for any Spanish director looking for some arty nudity. The body-suit, one feels, was not Anaya’s idea. Given her druthers, she’d no doubt be happy just strolling about starkers.

The villa/laboratory has one further inhabitant and, if you know your Shelley, you’d expect it to be Igor. Sadly, though, she’s called Marilia, and has been the doctor’s faithful servant since birth. No hump though, disappointingly. She’s used to the doctor bringing patients home for specialist treatment, but even she couldn’t guess what’s really going on here. Neither did I, actually, although it all made perfect sense – albeit in a loopy, deranged way – by the time the credits rolled.

Stock Spanish and archetypally Almodóvar, The Skin I Live In is presented us to us straight-faced, without the nudge-nudge frivolity of other psyche-thriller/horrors. In one sense I appreciated the earnestness of the endeavour, but it does rather open the door for criticism over the accuracy of the story. However, when far-fetched tales are presented so beautifully such matters are easily overlooked. Take for example, the aforementioned Frankenstein or Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers...

Gorgeous to look at – and I don’t exclusively mean Anaya - The Skin I Live In leads us down one path before pulling us in another direction. We’ve come to expect certain things from Almodóvar movies over the years, and he duly obliges. There’s almost not a need for him any more when you consider the acolytes he’s produced in his home country. There’s a reason Spain still continues to produce high-quality psyche-thrillers; here’s the master back once more to show the upstarts how it’s really done.