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The Skin I Live In review
:. Director: Pedro Almodóvar
:. Starring: Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya
:. Script: Pedro Almodóvar, Thierry Jonquet
:. Original Title: La piel que habito
:. Running Time: 2:00
:. Year: 2011
:. Country: Spain
:. Official Site: The Skin I Live In
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Organic and extremely disturbing, Pedro Almodovar's draws its excellent script from Mygale, a novel by French author Thierry Jonquet. With this story centered around a mad surgeon and an abduction, Almodovar delivers one of his signature films.
The attractive Dr. Ledgard (Antonio Banderas) having lost his wife in a car accident, he now entirely dedicates his research to developing transgenic human tissues for burn victims. When his daughter ends her life, following a rape, he decides to kidnap Vicente, the young man he holds responsible for her suicide. Through a series of operations, he ends up remodeling Vicente's face, giving the young man the traits of his late wife, Vera.
Almodovar revisits two his favorite obsessions, sexuality and identity. Far from the exuberance of his first films, the excess is here contained, within the limits of a story where impulses prevail.
The filmmaker explores psychic disorders and repressed instincts, coldly, through his characters, whether it's Dr. Ledgard, the brutal and lewd brother who unexpectedly raped Vera or the housekeeper (Marisa Paredes) who watches over the creature Dr. Ledgard has created in his madness. This approach might somewhat upset the director's early fans but isn't that far from two of his major works, Matador and Tie Me Up. Almodovar borrows not only from horror films (demented doctors) but also from Hitchcock (male heroes obsessed by the desire to resurrect their lost love like in Vertigo).
The actors give themselves fully to this sick universe while the novel, with its themes of vengeance, sexual disorder and transgender renaissance, give Almodovar a dream subject to embrace some of his obsessions.
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Cannes film festival 2011
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