THE SKIN I LIVE IN

Gender Politics

Directed by Pedro Almodovar
Starring Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Marisa Paredes, Roberto Alamo

Spanish  auteur Pedro Almodovar’s latest film takes his usual thematic concerns - sexuality, gender, familial relationships, secrets - and filters them through a modern day Frankenstein narrative. The result, while not entirely successful, is at the very least never less than fascinating.

Surgeon/scientist Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas, working under Almodovar for the first time in 20 years) has developed an artificial skin that is impervious to burning. He claims to have developed it using laboratory mice, but if that’s the case, who is the mysterious female patient (Elena Anaya) he keeps captive in his mansion-cum-laboratory? Why does Ledgard have such a close relationship with his servant, Marilia (Marisa Paredes)? And how does the carnival-costumed thief, Zeca (Roberto Alamo), factor in to all this?

Almodovar employs a non-chronological narrative structure in order to tease out the answers to his story’s mysteries, flashing back to earlier times to show that Ledgard, like every mad scientist from Victor Frankenstein to Victor Fries, is motivated be personal tragedy; the suicide of his wife following her disfigurement by fire providing the motivation for his cutting-edge experimentation. That’s a far too simplistic formula for Almodovar, and he layers in his usual grab-bag of polysexual and polyamorous relationship drama to spice up the mix.

For all its focus on the interpersonal, The Skin I Live In remains a strangely distant affair; while its chilly, almost Hitchcockian style works to heighten the sense clinical coldness, it does little to help the viewer get into the minds of the characters. These are rendered even more opaque by the film’s obsession with shifting identities and old secrets, and it can take some work to fathom the various motives and agendas before all the pieces are laid out on the board.

It is beautiful to look at though, with sumptuous production design and location work, all framed perfectly by Almodovar’s voyeuristic camera. He’s also lost none of his skill in capturing the human body at its most arresting; Anaya is captivating as the vulnerable yet resourceful Vera, and Banderas is magnetic as the driven, deranged doctor.

The Skin I Live In is a work that defies easy classification. It wears the trappings of science fiction and horror, but evinces little of the emotions normally associated with those genres. It’s both wickedly funny and wickedly perverse, often simultaneously, and yet it deals with emotions and matters of the utmost seriousness. It’s a beautiful film that contains some ugly insights into human jealousy and ambition, yet it masks those under a glossy veneer. This isn’t the first time Almodovar has dabbled in genre experimentation - see Live Flesh - and neither is it his most successful foray, but it is a highly original and idiosyncratic work, and one that true cineastes will flock to.

_TRAVIS JOHNSON