TPWW Forums - View Single Post

**Downunder** · 05-23-2011, 08:20 PM

Like Hanso - I don't know where you came up with that film description Droford.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...74I81F20110519

Cannes film review: "The Skin I Live In"

CANNES, France (Hollywood Reporter) - As implausible as it might seem, the cinema world of Pedro Almod�var just got stranger in "The Skin I Live In" ("La Piel Que Habito"). Along with such usual Almod�var obsessions as betrayal, anxiety, loneliness, sexual identity and death, the Spanish director has added a science-fiction element that verges on horror. But like many lab experiments, this melodramatic hybrid makes for an unstable fusion. Only someone as talented as Almod�var could have mixed such elements without blowing up an entire movie.

With Antonio Banderas returning to the fold to play the mad-scientist protagonist, Sony Pictures Classics is assured that more than the Almod�var faithful will show up for its North American release. Reactions will vary, as it's hard to tell just how much of this is being delivered with tongue-in-cheek panache or how emotionally invested the auteur is in his Dr. Frankenstein character.

That doctor would be Banderas' character, Dr. Robert Ledgard, an eminent plastic surgeon and university researcher. As befits his profession, Robert looks like he stepped out of the pages GQ. Yet his face conveys a sense of dark purpose. And he works out of a clinic in his own suburban, highly isolated and secure compound outside Toledo.

He presents colleagues with a paper indicating he has been researching the creation of a new and better, stronger skin that considerably bends the boundaries of bioethics. The audience by this point is well aware that confined within his mansion is a young woman, Vera (Elena Anaya), who is being molded — there is no other word for it — to the doctor's specific requirements. And that would be to largely resemble his late wife, who was burned beyond recognition in a car crash and chose to die rather than to live in such ruined skin.

Vera wears a skin-colored body stocking like a second skin and spends much of the time in a series of yoga positions. These help her to reach an inner core of selfhood the doctor can never touch.

Then a man in a tiger costume (Roberto Alamo) breaks into the house. He's in tiger skin because it's Carnival time, but you suspect Almod�var would have found any excuse to put him into that costume to achieve the image of a tiger on the prowl for Vera.

There is first a sexual and then a violent encounter, which leads to revelations about the relationship between the doctor and the tiger-man, and between the men and Robert's housekeeper (Marisa Paredes). Then the movie flashes back six years, which introduces two more characters, Robert's daughter (Blanca Su�rez) and a local youth (Jan Cornet) who sets his sights on the young, emotionally fragile woman while he is high on pills at a party....

etc etc

05-23-2011, 08:20 PM	#13
Downunder God Bless America Posts: 37,905	Like Hanso - I don't know where you came up with that film description Droford. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...74I81F20110519 Cannes film review: "The Skin I Live In" CANNES, France (Hollywood Reporter) - As implausible as it might seem, the cinema world of Pedro Almod�var just got stranger in "The Skin I Live In" ("La Piel Que Habito"). Along with such usual Almod�var obsessions as betrayal, anxiety, loneliness, sexual identity and death, the Spanish director has added a science-fiction element that verges on horror. But like many lab experiments, this melodramatic hybrid makes for an unstable fusion. Only someone as talented as Almod�var could have mixed such elements without blowing up an entire movie. With Antonio Banderas returning to the fold to play the mad-scientist protagonist, Sony Pictures Classics is assured that more than the Almod�var faithful will show up for its North American release. Reactions will vary, as it's hard to tell just how much of this is being delivered with tongue-in-cheek panache or how emotionally invested the auteur is in his Dr. Frankenstein character. That doctor would be Banderas' character, Dr. Robert Ledgard, an eminent plastic surgeon and university researcher. As befits his profession, Robert looks like he stepped out of the pages GQ. Yet his face conveys a sense of dark purpose. And he works out of a clinic in his own suburban, highly isolated and secure compound outside Toledo. He presents colleagues with a paper indicating he has been researching the creation of a new and better, stronger skin that considerably bends the boundaries of bioethics. The audience by this point is well aware that confined within his mansion is a young woman, Vera (Elena Anaya), who is being molded — there is no other word for it — to the doctor's specific requirements. And that would be to largely resemble his late wife, who was burned beyond recognition in a car crash and chose to die rather than to live in such ruined skin. Vera wears a skin-colored body stocking like a second skin and spends much of the time in a series of yoga positions. These help her to reach an inner core of selfhood the doctor can never touch. Then a man in a tiger costume (Roberto Alamo) breaks into the house. He's in tiger skin because it's Carnival time, but you suspect Almod�var would have found any excuse to put him into that costume to achieve the image of a tiger on the prowl for Vera. There is first a sexual and then a violent encounter, which leads to revelations about the relationship between the doctor and the tiger-man, and between the men and Robert's housekeeper (Marisa Paredes). Then the movie flashes back six years, which introduces two more characters, Robert's daughter (Blanca Su�rez) and a local youth (Jan Cornet) who sets his sights on the young, emotionally fragile woman while he is high on pills at a party.... etc etc