I remember the first exploitation movie I rented like it was yesterday. I knew it wasn't a normal movie and I knew it wasn't a porn flick, because it was shelved where I could see it. That thing (an Italian women-in-prison movie) fascinated my 13 year old self for a couple of months before I figured out a way of having someone older rent it out for me. The latent, infantile shame I felt watching that movie kept me on the fence about THE SKIN I LIVE IN for a couple years. I know it's not an exploitation movie, that Pedro Almodovar has a seal to quality to what he does, but first times emotions are a powerful wordless thing. Turns out boredom and old Netflix queues can help cross psychological boundaries like no other thing.
The narrative of THE SKIN I LIVE IN is fractured, non-linear and rather hard to follow. It is based on a novel by French author Thierry Jonquet, but I don't know how much liberty Pedro Almodovar took in adapting it to a screenplay. It's about Dr.Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas), a seemingly brilliant medical doctor and researcher, working on creating a tougher model of skin that resist fire, mosquito bites and such things. Only problem is that he keeps his test subject prisoner at home, a young woman with mysterious origins we discovert through the viewing of THE SKIN I LIVE IN. Ledgard's life has been marked by tragedy, and his psyche hasn't quite recovered from all this loss. Vera Cruz (Elena Anaya) is not just a patient. She shouldn't be there and, to a certain extent, she shouldn't even exist.
THE SKIN I LIVE IN was my first Almodovar. There are plenty of things I didn't understand about his approach, but notably his vision of women. Notably of the female body. I shouldn't base my opinion on such an ambitious and amorphous movie, but shit. The things I've seen in there make me wonder. There is a borderline gratuitious scene in the beginning where Ledgard walks a private garden and teenage girls are getting banged by their boyfriends. There are a couple graphic scenes of sexual violence too.What struck me about these scenes is that they're not ugly. I mean, their content is, but they are filmed in such a slick and caring way, they barely seem grotesque when integrated to the dark and tormented stroyline of THE SKIN I LIVE IN. Pedro Almodovar obviously loves women, even when working with a narrative that hates them. The movie would've been lewd and trashy if left to anybody else.
Seeing the beauty in overall ugliness is a recurring theme, as illustrated here.
I wouldn't know what to call THE SKIN I LIVE IN. Would it be psychological horror? There is enough graphic material and enough suggested atrocities (including extreme body modifications) to classify it as such. Would it be a thriller, though? The themes of obsession and identity are strong enough to make it work also. THE SKIN I LIVE IN is one of these narratives that come into a life of their own because they are built from original thoughts. I enjoyed it despite the oddball sexuality because it isn't like anything I've previously seen or read. It's impervious to genre classification and I think there are not enough movies like that. Easy classification often leads to easy revenue in cinema, and it clearly wasn't Pedro Almodovar's plan. It's strange to say, but THE SKIN I LIVE in is, first and foremost, a labour of love.
So how would I describe THE SKIN I LIVE IN in a nutshell? It's a movie about men obsession with women and how they become drifting animals when their relationships are destroyed, whether it's by themselves or by fate. There are a couple of sexually rough scenes, but I thought they were ultimately OK in the perspecive of THE SKIN I LIVE IN because they served to expose these dark and helpless obsessions. It's not an easy movie by any means, despite gracefully surfing the line between several genres. There's a lot more than meets the eye behind the images that Almodovar presents you. THE SKIN I LIVE IN's construction is simple enough despite the non-linearity (it's easier to follow than Christopher Nolan's MEMENTO, for example), but its intent is weird and ambitious. It's a unique movie and you should watch it because it it so.
So how would I describe THE SKIN I LIVE IN in a nutshell? It's a movie about men obsession with women and how they become drifting animals when their relationships are destroyed, whether it's by themselves or by fate. There are a couple of sexually rough scenes, but I thought they were ultimately OK in the perspecive of THE SKIN I LIVE IN because they served to expose these dark and helpless obsessions. It's not an easy movie by any means, despite gracefully surfing the line between several genres. There's a lot more than meets the eye behind the images that Almodovar presents you. THE SKIN I LIVE IN's construction is simple enough despite the non-linearity (it's easier to follow than Christopher Nolan's MEMENTO, for example), but its intent is weird and ambitious. It's a unique movie and you should watch it because it it so.