Erik's thoughts on "The Skin I Live In"

     The XX and XY chromosomes get mashed up and slightly stirred in Pedro Almodovar's new thematically beautiful tale of love and loss, The Skin I Live In. One third of the story told in flashbacks, this new work is about a part-time surgeon, full-time widower operating at home and strongly desiring a female patient (his only patient) locked away in an upstairs room in solitary confinement. There's just one thing: the woman, Vera, looks oddly like the surgeon's deceased wife, who after getting burned beyond all recognition in a car crash with a former on-the-side lover, took her life many years ago once she got a look at her disfigured reflection. That she dies in front of her young, innocent daughter (who simultaneously sings a song that will prove even more substantial in the girl's adult life) only begins to imply the film's all encompassing, wrap-around poetry. A task in itself, to describe an Almodovar plot is to partially understand, in retrospect, why it had to be presented in the director's intended order necessary to gain its full impact. The film is a powerful mystery unconcerned with the big reveal.

     The film goes further, much further, with its labyrinth-structured narrative (at the screening I attended, Almodovar, in person to introduce the film, admitted that although the viewer may have questions in the first hour, by hour two all should be understood), and it wouldn't make much sense or be as an enlightening an experience without understanding all that came before it. Thus I will only begin to note a few of the themes at play, each worthy of a closer analysis in a long form essay. The most intriguingly mindbending themes persist to the ideas of sex versus gender (for example, one character's refusal to apply makeup and wear colorful dresses to show off her fully formed female figure because, as a woman, she is expected to), transexuality versus genital castration (one character loses one to gain another), post-traumatic stress disorder versus Freudian daddy issues (a bad experience with the opposite sex leads a child to fear the most influential male figure in her life), science vs ethics (deranged surgeon uses his profession for personal gain, developing a God complex), and forgotten or usually hidden loves (some examples include our lead character's unawareness of his real madre — who he has ironically known for years — and his brother Zeca; Vera's refusal to sleep with Zeca, confusing and angering him for slightly misconstrued purposes; the aforementioned daughter not being able to recognize her horribly deformed mother; a different set of mother and child at the film's agonizing conclusion, one not recognizing its offspring, pleading for acceptance). Each in their painful way, these themes are handled with care and ample dramatic effect.

     The film features great songs, of course, but they are unfortunately unsubtitled for the American release, forcing me to appreciate the awesome sounds without the content. Such is life. The night before viewing The Skin I Live In, I watched Almodovar's 1990 release, Tie Me Up! Time Me Down!, a film I had been meaning to catch for some time. Also starring Antonio Banderas, that film was about a mentally unstable individual who kidnaps a former porn star and forces her to fall in love with him. Banderas' character in The Skin I Live In is out for love too, and thinking back, comes up with similar ways of getting it. By the movies' respective endings, one relationship works out, one doesn't. And yet this may have less to do with a growing bleakly pessimistic view from Almodovar than with a recurring belief that all true love must end tragically to create great drama.

Highly Recommended