The Skin I Live In

The Skin I Live In
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Pedro Almodóvar
Produced by	Agustín Almodóvar Pedro Almodóvar Esther García
Screenplay by	Pedro Almodóvar
Based on	Tarantula by Thierry Jonquet
Starring	Antonio Banderas Elena Anaya Marisa Paredes Jan Cornet Roberto Álamo
Music by	Alberto Iglesias
Cinematography	José Luis Alcaine
Edited by	José Salcedo
Production company	El Deseo S.A. Blue Haze Entertainment Canal+ España Televisión Española Instituto de la Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales FilmNation Entertainment
Distributed by	Warners España (Spain) Sony Pictures Classics
Release date	19 May 2011 (2011-05-19) (Cannes) 2 September 2011 (2011-09-02) (Spain)
Running time	120 minutes[1]
Country	Spain
Language	Spanish
Budget	$13.5 million[2]
Box office	$30.8 million[3]

The Skin I Live In (Spanish: La piel que habito) is a 2011 Spanish psychological horror film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, starring Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Marisa Paredes, Jan Cornet, and Roberto Álamo. The Skin I Live In is based on Thierry Jonquet's novel Mygale, first published in French and then in English under the title Tarantula.^[2][4]

Almodóvar has described the film as "a horror story without screams or frights".^[5] The film was the first collaboration in 21 years between Almodóvar and Banderas since Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990).^[6] It premiered in May 2011 in competition at the 64th Cannes Film Festival, and won Best Film Not in the English Language at the 65th BAFTA Awards. It was also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and 16 Goya Awards.

Plot

Plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard was successful in cultivating an artificial skin resistant to burns and insect bites, which he calls "GAL", that he says he has been testing on athymic mice. He presents his results in a medical symposium but when he privately discloses he has also conducted illegal transgenic experiments on humans, he is forbidden to continue with his research.

On his secluded estate, Ledgard is keeping a young woman named Vera captive, with the help of one of his servants, Marilia. Due to the suspension of his official experiments, Robert asks Marilia to dismiss the other servants.

While Robert is out, Marilia's son Zeca, having committed a robbery, arrives in a Tiger costume and asks his mother to hide him for a few days. He sees Vera on Ledgard's security camera screens and demands to see her in person. When Marilia refuses to let him stay after she invites him in, he binds and gags her and then rapes Vera. Robert arrives and kills Zeca.

While Robert disposes of Zeca’s body, Marilia tells Vera that she (Marilia) is the mother of both Zeca and Robert by different men, a fact she has not shared with them. Robert was adopted by Marilia’s employers but was ultimately raised by her. Zeca later left to live in the streets and smuggle drugs, while Robert went to medical school and married a woman named Gal. When Zeca came back years later, he and Gal ran off together. They were involved in a terrible car crash in which Gal was badly burnt. Thereafter she lived in total darkness without any mirrors. One day, while hearing her daughter Norma singing in the garden, Gal accidentally saw her own reflection in the window; traumatized by the sight, she jumped to her death.

In the present, Robert returns and spends the night with Vera. During the night, he dreams of his past, specifically the night of a wedding six years earlier, where he finds Norma (his daughter) unconscious on the ground. Norma, who had been taking medication for psychosis--having been rendered mentally unstable due to witnessing her mother's suicide--comes to believe that she was raped; she develops a fear of all men and spends eight years in a mental health facility. She eventually kills herself in the same manner that her mother did.

Vera, too, dreams about the same event: Vicente, a young man who works in his mother's dress shop, crashes the wedding and meets Norma. Like others at the party, he is under the influence of drugs. He walks with Norma into the garden. She lists the psychiatric medications she has taken. Norma begins to take off some of her clothes, stating she would be naked all the time if she could. Vicente kisses her and compliments her. While they are lying down with Vicente on top of her, she suddenly starts to have a frantic reaction to his heated sexual passions, which she was not ready for and she starts screaming. In his attempt to hush her screams she bites his hand. He slaps her, accidentally knocking her unconscious. He then caringly puts her clothes back in place and flees the scene, confused and nervous, just before Robert arrives.

Robert tracks down Vicente and has him knocked off his motorbike, kidnaps him, and holds him in captivity. His mother's search for him remains unsolved. Meanwhile Robert subjects him to a vaginoplasty and later instructs him how to slowly stretch his new vagina. Over a period of six years, Robert physically transforms Vicente into a replica of his late wife, and calls him Vera. During this period of time, Vicente struggles to keep himself sane and cling to the core of his true identity.

After an absence of four years, Marilia returns to work in Robert’s house to look after Vera (Vicente). Vera reveals to Marilia that he has been held captive for the last six years.

Back in the present, Robert's new relationship with Vera dismays Marilia, who does not trust Vera. Fulgencio, one of Robert's colleagues, reads a news story about the missing Vicente and recognizes him as one of their sex change patients. He accuses Robert of falsifying Vicente's consent and of experimenting on him. Vera (Vicente)suddenly stands there and supports Robert, asserting his willing participation and states that he had always been a woman. During the night, Robert and Vera start having sex, but Vera tells him that it is still painful after the Tiger's rape. Ostensibly going downstairs to find lubricant, she retrieves Robert's gun and kills Robert. Marilia, alerted by the sound of the shot, goes in with her own pistol in hand and finds her son Robert dead on the bed. She then too gets shot by Vera (who was hiding under the bed) and says on her dying breath "I knew it"

Freed from captivity and the need to play along with Robert's whims, Vicente (Vera) returns to his mother's dress shop for the first time since being kidnapped. He tearfully tells his lesbian ex-colleague Cristina (whom Vicente had loved six years prior) of his kidnapping, forced sex change, and the murders. Then, as his mother enters the room, Vicente quietly reveals his identity to them in the final line of the movie -- "I am Vicente."

Cast

Production

Pedro Almodóvar read Thierry Jonquet's Tarantula about ten years before the film premiered. He described what attracted him in the novel as "the magnitude of Doctor Ledgard's vendetta".^[7] This became the core of the adaptation, which over time moved further and further from the original plot of the novel. Almodóvar was inspired by Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face and the thriller films of Fritz Lang when he wrote the screenplay.^[7]

The director announced the project in 2002, when he envisioned Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz in the film's two leading roles, but eventually cast Banderas and Elena Anaya.^[8] The Skin I Live In was the first film Almodóvar and Banderas made together in 21 years, after having been regular collaborators in the 1980s. The film was produced through El Deseo for a budget of €10 million.^[2]

Principal photography began 23 August 2010 and ended almost four months later.^[2][9] Filming locations included Santiago de Compostela, Madrid, and a country house outside Toledo.^[2]

Release

Cast and director at the Cannes Film Festival premiere; from left to right at forefront: Blanca Suárez, Jan Cornet, Elena Anaya, Almodóvar, Antonio Banderas, Marisa Paredes and Jean-Paul Gaultier.

The film premiered on 19 May 2011 in competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.^[10] Due to developments in the industry of film distribution, El Deseo decided to abandon their previous release strategy for Almodóvar's works. The director's films had in the past usually been released in Spanish theatres in the spring and internationally during the last quarter of the year. The Skin I Live In was released worldwide in the autumn. The British release was 26 August 2011 through 20th Century Fox.^[11] In Spain it premiered on 2 September 2011.^[9] The film was released in the United States on 14 October the same year in a limited run through Sony Pictures Classics^[12] following its American premiere at the 49th New York Film Festival on 12 October 2011.^[13]

Accolades

Anaya received the Goya Award for Best Actress. The film won Best Film Not in the English Language at the 65th British Academy Film Awards; in previous years Almodóvar won that same award for his 1999 film All About My Mother and his 2002 film Talk to Her.

References

External links

• Official website (Spain)
• Official website (US)
• The Skin I Live In on IMDb
• The Skin I Live In at Box Office Mojo
• The Skin I Live In at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Skin I Live In at Metacritic