Artist The Skin I Live In

Pedro Almodóvar’s reunion with Antonio Banderas mixes melodrama and camp in a high-art monster movie about a mad scientist surgeon (Banderas), who has perfected a kind of synthetic skin that can not be burned or damaged. The Skin I Live In builds its mystery around the relationship between Banderas, his Frankenstein flesh, and a woman he’s holding captive in his laboratory. Though based on Thierry Jonquet’s novel Tarantula, Almodóvar’s latest owes as much to Georges Franju’s creepy 1960 French horror flick, Eyes Without A Face, which similarly connects issues of madness, mutilation, and aesthetics. Here, though, there’s a bit more rape, bondage, and sexual reassignment. 

Updated 12/05/2011