“The Skin I Live In” is the most disquieting film I’ve seen in years. Don’t let that stop you from seeing it, though. It’s also the masterpiece we’ve long awaited from Pedro Almodovar. The Spanish director, a fixture of the arthouse, has finally found a way to channel his love of melodrama into something deeper. “The Skin I Live In” is a studied exploration of identity, love, loss and revenge, a film with real feeling. It’s quite an accomplishment, given that Almodovar didn’t dispense with the over-the-top machinations either.
Perhaps the biggest epiphany here, however, is that the film gives us a completely revitalized Antonio Banderas, working once again in his native Spanish. Banderas is Robert Ledgard, an eminent plastic surgeon and researcher who has turned his Toledo villa into an experimental clinic.
| On screen |
| ‘The Sking I Live In’ |
| 3.5 out of 4 stars |
| Stars: Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya |
| Director: Pedro Almodovar |
| Rated: R for disturbing violent content including sexual assault, strong sexuality, graphic nudity, drug use and language |
| Running time: 117 minutes |
“The face identifies us,” he intones in the film’s opening, as he presents some findings to his colleagues. Burn victims, like all humans, need to express their emotions through a face, even if it’s not the one with which they were born.
He would know. His wife died years earlier, after a burning car wreck left her unrecognizably disfigured. Since then, he’s been obsessed with creating an artificial skin that can withstand any measure of heat — at least that from without. Because inner trauma can be just as dangerous, as we’ll see when we meet the doctor’s guinea pig: a beautiful woman named Vera (Elena Anaya) he keeps locked away with the help of the family maid, Marilia (Marisa Paredes).
It would be a mistake to tell you much more than this — and it would be a mistake for you to look elsewhere in search of more details of the plot. “The Skin I Live In” is full of surprises, which make watching this disturbing film a strange pleasure. Think David Lynch or David Cronenberg. Almodovar is as much a stylist as those two — it doesn’t feel like anyone else’s movie.
Except, perhaps, Banderas’. Anaya has a tough role to play, in every sense, and she’s a marvel. But this film marks a welcome return to form for the Spanish actor who’s spent too many years appearing in children’s franchises such as “Shrek” and “Spy Kids.” He and Almodovar began their film careers together in the early 1980s.
He’s almost as transformed as his character’s unlucky (and unwilling) patient. Gone is the stereotypical, almost laughable foreign character in which he keeps getting cast. Here, he’s suave, but not in an uncomplicated way: He’s also cunning and contemptible. But we feel for him at the same time we watch his evil unfold. Banderas and Almodovar offer us their best, resulting in emotions — in shivers alternately creepy and charming — neither we nor they have had in years.
