Pedro Almodóvar’s latest, “The Skin I Live In,” is another of his tightly scripted, beautifully shot, brilliantly acted kaleidoscope rides and anyone who loves film and filmmaking should see it.
Almodóvar is Spain’s master filmmaker, a self-taught genius whose fame had begun to spread before he even made his first full-length film. “The Skin I Live In” shares several traits with his catalog of films in that it never goes where the viewer expects it to go and every major character is both a hero and a villain. Every major character is relatable and the audience will find itself rooting for and against each and every one of them at different times in the film. By the time this film is over, reality has been flipped and twirled and skewed.
There is not a single superfluous line or movement in this film yet there is room in it for each and every one of these realities. His housekeeper is also his mother but he doesn’t know it. She considers her son insane, both of her sons insane: Ledgard and the one he does not know is his brother. Ledgard suffers terrible tragedy, loves deeply and lives a life fueled by hatred and obsessed with revenge. Or maybe his true motivation is hope; he hopes to regain what he has lost.
In the end, however, “The Skin I Live In” is about exactly that. It’s an exploration of identity and that kernel of “me”-ness that lives in us all, innate and untouchable. That “me”-ness that is still there when the drugs wear off.
This is definitely not a movie for children, it’s a movie for and about adults. It’s a movie, too, in which each frame is either heartbreakingly beautiful – a brass saxophone with its abalone keys gleaming against a hyacinth-colored shirt – or hideously ugly. Or both. So much blood spattered on golden sheets in the wake of a murder. Those sheets burning in a brass tub while a rape victim looks on.
Deborah Osment, is an award-winning screenwriter and producer. Her work has been screened at the Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, HBO, AFI and many other venues throughout the world.
