The Skin I Live In - review

10 April 2012

You could call it the year's classiest horror movie. Or you could tick off the references in Pedro Almodóvar's new film to others he has made or to those directed by someone else from the late Fifties. Whichever you decide, you are unlikely to consider The Skin I Live In as one of his best. Perhaps the closest comparison is Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! That, however, was more erotic than sinister.

This one is, of course, beautifully shot and full of Almodóvar's distinctive use of colour, production design and attention to detail. He is always a film-maker who gives you something to see. But this story of a plastic surgeon (Antonio Banderas, reunited at last with his favourite director) who keeps a young woman (newcomer Elena Anaya) as an experimental subject in an out-of-the-way Spanish mansion, looks a bit like Hitchcock having a grisly giggle.

A violent criminal (Roberto Alamo) breaks into the mansion, discovers the secret and forces the odd couple to examine the weird and criminal lives which brought them together.

There's a doting housekeeper (Marisa Peredes) hovering round the surgeon and just enough genuine gore for a full-blown horror, matched with a dollop of psychology to mitigate the proceedings as art.

The performances are exceptional. Banderas is quietly dotty as the doctor, never going over the top but defiantly villainous, while Anaya's plastic mask still allows her to seem something other than your usual victim.

Almodóvar doesn't push the grotesque elements too hard but states the enormity of the situation as simply as possible.

Even so, you get the feeling that Buñuel, another Spanish master, would have done this strange plot deeper justice. It is almost as if Almodóvar is playing with us, and also playing with the film's many reminders of what he has accomplished before.
It's fun but shouldn't it be more than that?

The Skin I Live In (La Piel Que Habito)
Cert: 15

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