Film Reviews

The Skin I Live In

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: Antonio Banderas
• Details: Spain / 117mins (16).

After the kooky Volver and the thriller Broken Embraces, The Skin I Live In sees the Spanish director dip a toe into body horror. Don't go thinking Cronenberg, though: as the director says himself, this outing is 'a horror without screams or frights.' You might think what's the point, but The Skin I Live In is so odd and bizarre and impossible to second guess it keeps the audience on their toes right until the end. It's difficult, too, to discuss this movie in any kind of depth without giving anything away.
Dr. Ledgard (Banderas) was once a brilliant plastic surgeon who turned his back on his profession for research when his wife was horribly burned in a car crash. He's determined that this won't happen again and sets about creating a type of synthetic skin that can withstand the harshest of accidents. His guinea pig is the passive and beautiful Vera (Anaya) who Ledgard has locked up in his secluded mansion…
There. That's it. That's all I can give you. It's hard to get a grasp on anything here, as who the characters really are and what they're up to is revealed as the movie comes to a close: not only is this review light on plot, character motivation is entwined to the story to such an extent that not a lot can be given away there either. What I can tell you that the characters are always up to something interesting. Ledgard's a kind man but unhinged, broken yet strong. Vera moves from sexually alluring to dangerous and back again. Everything is up in the air. And what's going to happen. And why is this happening now? So many questions.
But this is all deliberate. Almódovar flashes back and forward at will, piles silly twists onto ridiculous turns and introduces characters who look like they'll have a say in how this is going to turn out before the director suddenly gets rid. All this creates confusion, and to some this will be heady fun. To others, it's a mess of a movie filled with characters that you couldn't care less about and is too unfocussed to keep interest levels high.
I'm stuck in the middle. The Skin I Live In exists in peaks and troughs, starts and stops, hits and misses but when it peaks, starts and hits it's a bizarre delight and quite unlike anything you'll see this year. A horror without screams or frights The Skin I Live may be, but it is a disturbing and unsettling two hours of sexual identity exploration. When it troughs, stops and misses, the same old Almódovar comes out to play: soap opera dialogue where characters give their entire bio for no reason but pure exposition, bizarre character motivations and a plot that seems to be weird for weird's sake.
With so much going on, The Skin I Live In will reveal more with repeated viewing but there won't be a stampede to watch this again.

Review by Gavin Burke