What Would You Do?

Pedro Almodóvar is a gift to film and one that continually amazes me.  The Skin I Live In is no different.  I do hate to say this though, it is typical of most Almodóvar films in terms of direction and themes.  Yet this is a good thing because the matter of factness of his approach combined with the ever increasing quality merged with an out of the ordinary story creates a masterpiece.

I should qualify my review in saying that I am now a staunch fan of all of Almodóvar’s works.  While this should not hinder my ability to effectively review his films, it does mean that certain negatives expressed by other reviewers end up being positives in my opinion.  The outlandish stories and focus on the impact of society on gender are sometimes dismissed by other viewers, but seeing the progression of this aspect of his films is like seeing many pieces come together to form an entire picture.  The Skin I Live In is another piece to that puzzle.

I was impressed with the raw emotion Almodóvar was able to pull from the story and yet view that in a very non-emotional way.  As a viewer, you are forced to confront the issues on your level without the film forcing you in one direction or another.  This is exemplified in Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas).  Banderas plays an emotional destroyed doctor and scientist.  (Quick note, spoilers will be ahead but I will try my best not to reveal major points.  But it’s hard not to when the film is done in the style that this film is, so suck it up.)  His wife was in an accident and burned horribly, eventually committing suicide which their daughter witnesses.  The daughter becomes emotionally unstable and is placed into a very unwanted sexual situation that leads to her entering an asylum until she too commits suicide.  To see Banderas move between these events is captivating as he expresses his emotions in a myriad of ways from hate to love to revenge.  Yet the viewer is never told to like him.  We eventually reach a point where we have to question his action and judge him, but that only comes once the entire story is revealed.

I was also blown away by Vera (Elena Anaya).  She is the first part of this drama we meet as she is in some the of full body suit locked in a room.  As the story progresses, we are presented with a character that has been a part of Robert’s grand science experiment (or so we think).  We discover her skin is a part of his trials on the creation of a new skin to help burn victims.  While not approved, Robert continues the experiment on Vera.  Things become more complicated as we discover that Vera has been sculpted to resemble Robert’s dead wife and that the gap between doctor/scientist and patient/experiment is slowly dissolving.

What drives the film is the narrative.  We being in the present with Robert and Vera in their current situation but we are taken back to Robert’s earlier life experiencing the accident with his wife, situation with his daughter, and what actions Robert takes to get us where we are when the film begins.  This approach allows the viewer to slowly figure out the story and the trajectory Almodóvar is taking.  By the time the film ends we are left with many twist and turns and many re-evalutions of the characters.  This adds a sense of thrill and discovery as the films progresses.  We want to know more and more and that process invests us in the characters.

And now for the skip this if you don’t want to know what happens in the film.

While the film exists not he level of a thriller/mystery, it goes well beyond that when the issues of gender are introduced into the story.  We are force to view Robert as the typical male dominant of Spanish society.  He is the alpha male who had it all only to lose it.  He is forced to confront the issue of rape as his daughter is accosted by a young inebriated man.  The question becomes, what would you do?  Through the slow process of flashbacks, we are shown that Robert has kidnapped the man and begun transforming him from a man to a woman.  The eventual outcome is Vera.  This revelation is truly disturbing but opens a whole new aspect of the film.  Is the punishment Robert inflicts on Vicente (Jan Cornet) / Vera justified?  How do we react to Robert’s move from obsession over punishment to obsession over the object of that punishment?  How would we react to forceful gender reassignment?  Perhaps my only caveat with the film is how much of this is resolved by the end, it’s almost too neat of an ending.

Welcome back to those that skipped the last paragraph.

The Skin I Live In is part of the continued excellence of the mind of Pedro Almodóvar.  While it is a twisted and disturbing film at times, it is also filled with care and love for the craft of film-making.  Almodóvar is able to draw out amazing performances from his actors while constantly challenging the viewers on many aspects of society such as gender and punishment.  This is just the latest chapter in what is an amazing career that will hopefully continue to challenge us in the future.