LOS ANGELES — Pedro Almodovar’s imaginative new film, The Skin I Live In, is a bizarre amalgam of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Pygmalion. Shot in the glowing sunshine of an idyllic Spanish country estate, it is a brooding, dark fantasy of love, hate, and revenge.
A strikingly handsome Antonio Banderas (an actor who seems to get more handsome and more credible as he ages) is a prominent plastic surgeon who has veered off into research and experimentation on growing and transplanting human skin. Having failed to save his beloved wife, whose skin had been disastrously burned in a car accident, he embarks on a six-year odyssey to transform a local reprobate into a demure duplicate of his dead wife.
Banderas, as Dr. Robert Ledgard, is a humorless psychopath whose life has been dominated by strong women: his ruthless, adoring mother, his faithless wife, a psychologically troubled daughter, and the placid young woman who has managed to survive his surgical manipulations while being restrained in a silent, solitary room within his opulent villa.
The film includes several scenes of passionless sex, some interesting CSI-like maneuvers in an immaculate laboratory, and all the wonders of technology that a wealthy but maniacal loner can equip himself with. It appears that the only thing he lacks is scruples.
The Skin I Live In is a fascinating film, but not one that grips the viewer emotionally. Each of the characters is singularly one-dimensional; their individual personalities and predicaments remain in the middle distance and do not evoke empathy—or even sympathy. So in the end, when everyone gets his just desserts, the results, unfortunately, are neither particularly triumphant nor satisfying.
The Skin I Live In was selected for the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, and for a Gala Screening at the New York Film Festival. Written and directed by Pedro Almodovar, it also stars Elena Anaya, Marisa Paredes, Jan Cornet, and Roberto Alamo, and features the luminous cinematography of Jose Luis Alcaine.
It will open in selected theaters in Los Angeles and New York on October 14th.
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Citron is Los Angeles bureau chief for San Diego Jewish World. She may be contacted at cynthia.citron@sdjewishworld.com