"Revenge can change people"

Title: La Piel que Habito (The Skin I Live In)

Year: 2011

Genre: Drama, Thriller

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Writer: Pedro Almodóvar, Agustín Almodóvar (collaborator), Thierry Jonquet (novel "Tarantula")

Runtime: 117min

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Jan Cornet, Marisa Paredes

Produc.: Canal+ España, El Deseo S.A., Instituto de Crédito Oficial (ICO), Televisión Española (TVE)

Budget.: $13 million approx.

In The Skin I Live In Antonio Banderas plays Robert Ledgard, an excellent surgeon, who after the rape of his daughter Norma (Blanca Suarez) decides to kidnap Vicente (Jan Cornet), boy responsible for the act, to get revenge. 

Prior to this film the truth is that I had it hard getting into the so particular universe of Pedro Almodóvar. Given some comments that had come to me from people who were not liking this artist´s movies, there was a time when I finally ended up rejecting it, for creating myself a baseless prejudice to a director whose work I had not even bothered to see as to judge. 

In the end I ended up seeing three of his latest features in a very short period of time. I saw All About My Mother (1999), Bad Education (2004) and Talk to Her (2002). The first showed me a transvestite father and a nun with AIDS, in the second I was told the story of the homosexual love between a priest and a child, and in the third one I was told of a male nurse who after raping a comatose woman left her pregnant. So this spanish director had an affinity for movies with erotic content and somewhat twisted, and a certain attraction to the rather macabre arguments, which could make you feel rejection. On my part I did find this films to be somewhat outlandish but not less interesting, since Almodóvar had shown me to have the ability and sufficient talent to make his stories compelling. 

Later, when I learned of his last and most recent foray into the cinema, then I decided to check out of curiosity what average raiting would have people given to it on the IMDB site. The truth is that, today February 7, 2012, The Skin I Live In has a 7.7/10. Not bad, really. 

Finally I watched this film, lacking any notion of its subject. The picture then began quite rare, with Robert Ledgard watching a beautiful girl, her name Vera Cruz (Elena Anaya), through a giant TV screen, while she occupied a large room from which at no time was she seen getting out. Meanwhile, Robert and Marilia (Marisa Paredes), his employee, were presented as the warders in charge of the girl within her isolation to be comfortable, of that nothing to be missing for her, but also of her not to have chances of escaping. And here everything was a mystery. Almodóvar would never hurry when it come to gradually revealing the details of the story, each in its time and in the order in which he knew, would be the most accurate. 

The plot of the movie then began to unfold from a shot with a comical approach, in which a bald young man, Zeca (Robert Álamo), and dressed in a tiger costume crossed the street to look for Marilia, his mother, with whom he had long time been without seeing. Once inside the house would see Vera thanks to a TV in the kitchen, then would immobilize his mother, gagged and bound her into a chair, and quickly proceed to find Vera. Is in this way that, thanks to Robert Álamo is that Almodóvar would shows us much of the erotic content of the film, which would not make as wait too long. 

However, it would not be until Robert agreed Vera to leave her confinement that Marilia would give herself the time to put up the girl with the dramatic events concerning the past lived by Robert, first with the death of his wife and then with the tragedy of his daughter Norma (Blanca Suarez). From here the film would turn into a constant of flashbacks and returning into the present, getting as to know in detail the circumstances that had led to the rape of the girl, her subsequent staying in a clinic and the wrath of a vengeful father, suddenly changed into a masked hijacker capable of anything. Almodóvar manages to put into images in an impeccable way what must be the pain of a father who has been violated, hurting him where it could hurt him more, a suffering even bigger than if he had had some bones broken, for Ledgard to bring out the worst in him as a man. 

Without getting to much into matters that would be better for one to know, not by some criticism, but through the film itself, I can say that Robert will leave it clear to what extent he has been developed as a surgeon and how remarkable is his knowledge of the human body. 

In The Skin I Live In we get to know the very disturbing link that unites Robert with Vicente, and then, to Robert himself, but with Vera, whom he retains in a sort of Big Brother. 

My raiting: 9/10

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