The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodovar)

He's got her under the skin.

Pedro Almodovar, known for films that contain unique mixtures of human comedy, dramatic absurdity and gender commentaries, is unusually darker and bizarre in "The Skin I Live In", a film that greatly offers a very, very morbid take on grief and infatuation but is also able to preserve some of Almodovar's trademark humor, albeit a more underlying one. 

As if partly inspired by Victor Frankenstein's travails or even Scottie Ferguson's (of Hitchcock's "Vertigo") obsessive fixation towards a mysterious blonde woman, Almodovar's cinematic touches in this film are infinitely more brooding and, in some ways, also more pitiful in tone as it brings our protagonist, a brilliant plastic surgeon named Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas), into a fate already sealed by certain doom and imminent futility as he obsesses himself in endless experimentation with a mysterious woman named Vera (Elena Anaya).

I know, I know, there has been an almost automatic requirement for any film review to contain at least two to three sentence plot synopsis so that readers can familiarize themselves to whatever film the reviewer is tackling, ranting or plainly rambling about. But with me excluding one in this review, do think of this as a favor. See the film for yourself and be enlightened of what may be one of the most unique cinematic experiences that you may ever lay your senses upon for quite a while. Now, with that being said, let's go back to the review proper (or something like that). 

Obsession and tragedy, these has been one of the more recurring themes on film as far as the 'mad scientist' sub-genre is concerned ever since Victor Frankenstein found out (maybe 'discovered' is the posh word) that electricity can resurrect the dead. It has been nothing but a tired cinematic vehicle, but just like David Cronenberg's "The Fly", "The Skin I Live In" offers a truly thought-provoking story and some unforgettable characters that genuinely remind us of the potential narrative and emotional power that the said sub-genre really has. 

But with that being said, it does not mean that "The Skin I Live In" merely exists within the 'mad scientist' boundaries and not a step more. Instead, the film's quality is truly multifaceted that viewers may attend the theater runs with different expectations but can still come out individually satisfied in different ways. 

To watch the film expecting a tense and suspenseful film, one would not be disappointed. If one comes into the film expecting a humane film about flawed love and emotional tragedy, you won't be let down either. Perhaps this is how Pedro Almodovar has intended the film to be seen: as a deeply human film about the inhumanity of cognitive and emotional irrationality that balances profundity and some suspenseful storytelling. But still, I believe those are not the main reasons that has made this film a truly special one. For me, it was Almodovar and his trademark directorial self that has. 

A filmmaker known for his sensitive and tender approach to gender-bending narratives, Almodovar has made the film sexually unnerving and shocking in the surface for the purpose of capturing enough attention so that his real message concealed within the film's sensational imagery can be absorbed more thoroughly, which now reminds me of Chuck Palahniuk's novel "Rant". 

In there, the main character's mother used to put thumbtacks or other mouth-crimsoning objects into foods that she cooks. In that way, she sternly believes, their great taste would appeal to the palate more competently because you've dissected through the meal to get there. In layman's terms, she believes that ecstasy comes after difficulty, which is what "The Skin I Live In" is all about. Beneath the detestably explicit visual content, there lies Almodovar's ever-compelling gender commentary, waiting to enlighten its audience with what it has to say. 

A perfect companion piece or, should I say, a more twisted cinematic brother to "All About my Mother", "The Skin I Live In" raises questions that provoke not just the mind and the heart but also the very perception of one's own gender and where does it really reside: In the mind, in the genitals, or in the heart?

Whether it is in a person's physical appearance or somewhere deeper is not what's important. Even Almodovar is cautious enough not to preach his side all throughout the film. What counts is that he was able to raise this very idea seamlessly, with capable emotions and with proper humanity, within the film. As the plot twist (yes, there is one) reveals itself, it's not much about how it was unveiled, but how it affects us afterwards. Call it an emotional twist if you may. 

With a penetrating story, powerful performances, notably those of Antonio Banderas (overlooked) and Elena Anaya (terribly unnoticed), and a sobering outlook that questions the requisites of what really makes one man or woman, not mentioning the effectively dream-like visuals and musical scoring, Almodovar's "The Skin I Live In" is, bar no genres, one of the best films of 2011.

FINAL RATING

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodovar)

A gunslinging woman on one side, a Gazpacho-wielding one on the other.

Women reign in this unstoppably comic romantic farce directed by famous Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar. I do not know, but Spanish actresses really have a very unique way of conveying cinematic energy. Maybe it's their relentless native language or the contrast of their seemingly ordinary, straight-laced feminine features with unfitting comedy that has able to pull it off. They inhabit the screen with deadpan hysteria and overwhelming desperation that they never seem to bother with any kind of consciousness with how they look or act.

Do you reckon how some actresses act on a comedy film obviously aware that they're in on it anticipating every punchlines and absurdly crude behaviors? "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" came wallowing in the opposite, making its characters squeeze out stupefying humor from the odds of their internalized romances than the jokes concerning them. It's a pure comedy film parodying the maddening residues of a romance and the secretive yet strangely amusing life of 'lovers' than real 'couples'. It's never a rom-com romp. Yes, the film's comic foibles is at play, but the idea of romance is so far away.

The film's visual composition is very impressive considering that it's more concerned with its characters than its surroundings (its various settings are treated merely as narrative 'addresses' than truly involving set pieces). And accompanying the far-fetched reality of the whole plot, the film is uniquely exuberant in its colors (especially in Pepa's (the beautifully, dryly humorous Carmen Maura) scenes in her apartment), depicting quite subtly, although with vibrant hues, the colorfully crazy nuances of a mistress' life.

Yet with its overwhelming, intricately written female characters that show the likes of a squeamish woman involved with Shiite terrorists, one who faked her sanity to get out of a mental institution and a woman whose facial features resemble a Picasso painting losing her virginity in a dream, which director Almodovar may have injected some feminist empowerment into, "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" is never a film mainly concerned about feminism. Above all, I think it's more inclined with destroying the foundations of chauvinism and the romantic narcissism of men. Hell, we even see our women characters at the peak of emotional vulnerability after their devotions to their 'loving' men spiral out of their control. Is that purely feminist? No, I do not think so. I think the film is more of a tongue-in-cheek portrayal of the overall sloppiness of modernist love; quick and easy, passionate yet dire.

There's a scene in the film where the main object of affection, Ivan (a namesake of mine), Pepa's ex-lover, Lucia's (classy madness by Julieta Serrano) ex-husband, and Paulina's (Kiti Manver) current flame, is shown dubbing a Hollywood film with his Spanish language. The actor in the film within the film, Sterling Hayden, is commanding Joan Crawford to repeat what he says ("Lie to me. Tell me you've always loved me. Tell me you would have died without me."), but her mouth, although spouting words, never lets out any sounds. It was all silence on her part.

Yes, in the film's immediate reality, Joan Crawford's dubber (who is Pepa) is not yet present. But Almodovar, through that subtle scene, may have expressed his particular stance to what women must do in times when men's affectionately 'hollow' words pervade itself and when their romantic authoritarianism takes over: Shut up. Think. Wait.

Well, Pepa certainly didn't, and in the next scene, as she hears Sterling Hayden's words dubbed by Ivan through her headset, she fainted. Stung by the flowery words of an aging 'Don Juan', she was. But then there's always a time for sobriety.

FINAL RATING