The Skin I Live In

There's enough dysfunctional family history, latent psychopathy, and unhinged obsession in The Skin I Live In to fill several films, but director Pedro Almodóvar crafts his stylized tale of taboo relationships and mysterious identities with an expert precision. Set within a fractured timeline, the movie follows Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas), a gifted, but troubled, plastic surgeon who has developed a revolutionary artificial skin; his longtime housekeeper, Marilia (Marisa Paredes); and Vera (Elena Anaya), an enigmatic, body-stocking clad woman who has morphed from the doctor's unwilling patient to his captive obsession. Almodóvar unravels the details of trio's entangled relationships slowly, which makes the unthinkable third-act revelations even more disorienting. Banderas, in his first Spanish-language role in years, inhabits Ledgard with a deceptively calm demeanor that belies his mad-scientist tendencies, while Anaya's Vera hides her tragic existential confusion under a layer of porcelain beauty. Though both of their performances, as well as the supporting cast, are strong, part of the film's discomfort comes, not from the empathy engendered by these hideously damaged characters, but more from the outrageous acts they commit, both to themselves and each other. No one is who they appear to be, and the ways in which they reveal their true selves makes The Skin I Live In both haunting and horrific.