The Movie the Skin I Live In
The Skin I Live In is a Spanish film that was released in the year 2011 and its director was Pedro Almodovar. Among the cast of this movie were; Blanca Suarez, Roberto Alamo, Jan Cornet, Marisa Paredes, Elena Anaya and Antonio Banderas. The movie loosely forms its basis on the novel Tarantula by Thierry Jonquet. This was the first collaboration to be done in 21 years by Banderas and his former regular director Pedro Almodovar. Its premier was in May of the year 2011 during the 64th Cannes Film Festival.
Pedro Almodovar read Tarantula by Thierry Jonquet approximately ten years prior to the premier of the film. He says what attracted his attention to the book was the magnitude of the vendetta that Doctor Ledgard had. This then turned into the core of the adaptation which eventually moved more and more away from initial plot in the novel. He then made an announcement of the project of the film in 2002 when he pictured having Penelope Cruz and Anthony Banderas as the two lead roles in the movie but with time he decided to go with Elena Anaya and Anthony Banderas. The film production was done through El Deseo and it had a budget of ten million Euros.
The film has its setting in Toledo. In the year 2012, Robert Ledgard (Anthony Banderas) who was a surgeon has achieved success in cultivating a skin that cannot be burned making claims that he has only conducted tests of the process on mice. At his estate which doubles up as a medical research and operations facility, he has a young woman (Anaya) held captive with help from his servant known as Marilia (Paredes). It is the season for the carnival. In the course of Robert being away, Zeca (Alamo) having engaged in a robbery arrives dressed in a tiger costume for the carnival to request his mother who is Marilia to hide him for a number of days. He gets to know about the lady captive. When Marilia declines his request and also denies him access to the lady captive, he gags and binds her, gets access to the captive after which he rapes her. Robert gets there in time stops the rape and then murders Zeca.
Marilia informs the captive that she mothered both Zeca and Robert but with different fathers, a fact that she had not told them about. To give an explanation of what motivates Robert to carry out the experiments on the captive, she tells her that twelve years before Robert’s wife had gotten burnt in a car crash. When she got to see her appearance following eh accident, she committed suicide by jumping out of the window. Suarez who plays the part of their daughter Norma saw the death and needed psychiatric treatment after that. Marilia’s story then goes into a flashback.
It is six years prior to the current day. A young man called Vicente (Cornet) who is a young man working for his mother in her dress shop, makes advances towards his co-worker who was a lesbian but does not succeed. Norma gets temporary release from the psychiatric care to go for a wedding together with her father. During the reception dance, Vicente takes her to the garden and makes attempts to have sexual relations with her. She screams out loud. He then hits her and runs away. Roberts locates her daughter and when she wakes up she imagines that he was the one who tried to rape her. She is put back on psychiatric treatment and after a short time she kills herself. To get revenge for the rape, Vicente is kidnapped by Robert who performs a surgery for sex reassignment on him. He makes Vicente into his dead wife’s physical replication.
It is the year 2012 again. After Zeca’s attack and the explanation from Marilia, Vicente who is now a woman, has changed his name to Vera and fakes cooperation with Robert. Fulgencio (Fernandez) who is one of the colleagues to Robert gets to read a news story on a youth who is missing by the name of Vicente and recognizes him as a subject of a surgery for sex reassignment. He makes accusations on Robert of documents falsification so as to get to perform the surgery and also on experimenting on Vicente. Vera comes to offer support for Robert by asserting that she will willingly participate. Having gotten trust from Robert, he first murders him and then he murders Marilia. Vera then gets back to the dress shop owned by her mother and tells her and her coworker that she is Vicente but she is now a woman.
This is without a very intriguing movie. It is full of unexpected situations and the way in which the story line unfolds will keep you interested and glued to your TV screen. It is without a doubt a movie to watch.