The Skin I Live In
Directed by Pedro Almodovar
Retribution done Pedro style. Often outlandish in plot, with enough twists and turns to make you dizzy, but held together by all round intense and riveting performances, Almodovar’s latest offing is unusually restrained in aesthetic direction.
His quintessentially Mediterranean take on the horror genre encompasses mental illness, marital infidelity, teenage rape, fragicide, obsession with beauty and perfection, cloning, control and the inevitable tragic consequences of not being able to let go of the past.
Antonio Banderas, reunited with the director who discovered him, plays a renowned plastic surgeon who defies prevailing medical ethics to create the perfect artificial human skin in a laboratory he has set up in his mansion. When his mentally disturbed daughter is raped, he finds the perfect guinea pig for his experiments, taking the law into his own hands whilst justifying his actions with exquisite vengeance. With echoes of Frankenstein, Banderas’ character tries to tie up the entrails of his haunted past but proves to be his own undoing when he begins to fall in love with his own creation.
Review by Warren J Bugeja
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