The Skin I Live In

Name: The Skin I Live In
Genre: Drama
Released: October 14, 2011
Duration: 117 min
Rating: 70

2011

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Generally favorable reviews based on 37 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 146 Ratings

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8.0	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 146 Ratings

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The Skin I Live In

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Movie Details & Credits

Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: October 14, 2011 | R

Summary: Ever since his wife was burned in a car crash, Dr. Robert Ledgard, an eminent plastic surgeon, has been interested in creating a new skin with which he could have saved her. After twelve years, he manages to cultivate a skin that is a real shield against every assault. In addition to years of study and experimentation, Robert needed aEver since his wife was burned in a car crash, Dr. Robert Ledgard, an eminent plastic surgeon, has been interested in creating a new skin with which he could have saved her. After twelve years, he manages to cultivate a skin that is a real shield against every assault. In addition to years of study and experimentation, Robert needed a further three things: no scruples, an accomplice and a human guinea pig. Scruples were never a problem. Marilia, the woman who looked after him from the day he was born, is his most faithful accomplice. And as for the human guinea pig... Loosely based on Thierry Jonquet's 1995 novel "Mygale." (Sony Pictures Classics)
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Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Genre(s): Drama

Rating: R

Runtime: 117 min

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Critic Reviews

Shawn Levy

Nov 3, 2011

And while it may be true that Almodóvar doesn't have Hitchcock's way with terror, it's not clear that Hitchcock could leave the real world behind so wholly and convincingly as Almodóvar does here. Read full review

Rene Rodriguez

Nov 3, 2011

By the end of the movie, when all your questions have been answered, you're left with the exhilarating high of having been manipulated by a gifted artist in a diabolically dark mood. Read full review

Peter Rainer

Oct 14, 2011

It all achieves a loony unity by the end, even though what is being unified is not altogether palatable. Read full review

Dana Stevens

Oct 13, 2011

The Skin I Live In is a meditation on profound themes: memory, grief, violence, degradation, and survival - so why does it leave the viewer (at least this one) so curiously unmoved? Watching the parts of this multigenerational melodrama slowly fuse into a coherent (if wackily improbable) whole offers aesthetic and intellectual gratification, but little in the way of emotional punch. Read full review

Mike Scott

Dec 9, 2011

There's plenty of melodrama, plenty of whispered intensity, plenty of dramatic pauses in his story. There also are a few bizarro -- and, in some cases, unnecessary -- detours. But when it's all said and done, there's no real call for any emotional investment on the part of his audience. Read full review

Joe Neumaier

Oct 14, 2011

Almodovar makes some missteps in his icky mélange of melodrama and mischief, but the end result is playfully devious. Read full review

David Edelstein

Oct 10, 2011

It's the only Almodóvar movie in which feeling, emotional or sexual, doesn't suffuse the imagery and hold the ramshackle melodrama together. Read full review

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User Reviews

Dieguin

Dec 30, 2011

Classic Pedro Almodovar is back! The Skin I Live In is my favorite film of 2011, having been the only film to keep me smiling for the entire time --- either with its quirk, naughtiness, and over-the-top kitsch, or its very Spanish and clever script. I have not enjoyed an Almodovar filmClassic Pedro Almodovar is back! The Skin I Live In is my favorite film of 2011, having been the only film to keep me smiling for the entire time --- either with its quirk, naughtiness, and over-the-top kitsch, or its very Spanish and clever script. I have not enjoyed an Almodovar film this much since High Heels.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Abi

Feb 14, 2013

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This movie is beautiful, deranged, horrific, moving, thoughtful, and twisted. Every time I think of this movie I get goosebumps. The movie begins with a brilliant plastic surgeon trying to find a cure to perfect skin after his wife was burned in a car accident. He keeps a beautiful woman locked away in his mansion in which he experiments on. The plastic surgeons maid's (who has cared for him his whole life) son shows up and rapes the woman thinking that it his the plastic surgeons wife. Walking in on the act, the plastic surgeon shoots the son and kills him. Witnessing the rape reminds him of the fate of his daughter some years ago when she was raped at a party, causing her to become mental. The plastic surgeon kidnaps the rapist and locks him in a cell for weeks. After some time of being locked away, he takes him into his mansion where he preforms a sex change on the rapist. The rapist therefore is the woman that he his also experimenting on. He engages in sexual activity with "her", making "her" feel the pain that "she" put his daughter through. He decides to let "her" go, but "she" comes back a day later and they engage in more sexual activity. "She" ends up killing both him and the maid in the end, then leaves to return to "her" family.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Deanomite

Jan 30, 2020

I know people say this all the time, but this is the best movie I have seen in probably 5 years. i searched out all of Pedro Almodovar's other movies because of this. I won't give anything away, don't read about it, just watch this amazing movie, kind of a remake of Eyes Without a Face,I know people say this all the time, but this is the best movie I have seen in probably 5 years. i searched out all of Pedro Almodovar's other movies because of this. I won't give anything away, don't read about it, just watch this amazing movie, kind of a remake of Eyes Without a Face, but like 10x crazier.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Shiira

Dec 22, 2011

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Alicia menstruated. She needs to be cleaned up, down there. First, soapy water gets wringed from a rag, and then, it's a quick spritz from the water bottle, which sanitizes the vaginal expanse from the discharge of period blood with an antiseptic wiping, courtesy of two health care professionals. The female nurse uses gloves; the male nurse, we notice, uses his bare hands on the comatose patient. Although her flesh is often exposed, a woman's erogenous zones, in the context of the hospital, goes through a de-eroticization process, due to the specter of death, but nevertheless, the former dancer, we can plainly see, was a real heartbreaker, so her sexual allure is merely frozen, not lost. Supposedly, Alicia's breasts have turned quotidian, just another part that comprises the female anatomy, breasts stilled by her soporific state, no longer having to endure the crux of objectification, so nobody minds that Benigno(presumed gay) touches Alicia without a latex buffer. Needless to say, in the aftermath of the nurse's fireable offense, the rapist pulled a Jack Tripper on the whole hospital staff. When Benigno touches the vegetative body, it's with latent sexual desire; it's not rote clinical labor, because the benign psychopath impregnates his unconscious charge. But since Alicia's miscarriage results in her awakening, the rapist becomes a hero(in the filmmaker's eyes), and therefore pardoned of his crime. Obscured by the filmmaker's obvious affection for Benigno, is the fact that "Talk to Her", and not just "The Skin I Live In", is actually a horror movie, too, in the human sense, akin to "Straw Dogs". The controversial Sam Peckinpah film presents rape as a collaboration between a sexy woman and a helpless man. Amy Sumner, a mathematician's wife, walks confidently down a busy Cornwall street, braless, with her hard nipples poking through a white blouse, in full view of the menfolk. She's responsible for her own rape, the filmmaker is saying, due to her provocative attire. Worse yet, in "Talk to Her", Alicia has no say in what she wears(a flimsy off-white hospital gown), but gets raped anyway by the male nurse, since men are powerless to the female form, therefore, can't be held accountable for their actions. In the film-within-the-film, a black-and-white one-reeler, a man shrinks to the size of a figurine after downing some potion concocted by his lover, a scientist. Sharing a bed, the man pulls off the covers, revealing the woman's nude body, a landscape, and while she's sound asleep, he walks into her vagina. The orifice recalls the portal in Spike Jonze's "Being John Malkovich", especially near the end where puppeteer Craig Schwartz(John Cusack) ends up, not in the famous actor, but in the consciousness of a small girl, where he is doomed to live life through her eyes, without the benefit of puppet strings to exhort his will on the body and mind. Similarly, the nurse is a puppeteer himself in that Alicia can't move without his prompting. Visibly affected by the film, Benigno says, "And Alfredo stays in her forever," in a melancholic voice, because he knows that his time with the beautiful dancer is strictly circumstantial. Like Craig, the nurse imagines himself living vicariously through somebody else, but instead of taking up occupation in the person's brain, his projected counterpart lives in a vagina, doomed to witness man after man sexually pleasing the woman he loves. "Being John Malkovich" could easily have been directed by this filmmaker, since the 1999 "head movie" deals with sexual identity(and rape) in the same audacious manner, informing not only the sexual mores surrounding "Talk to Her", but "The Skin I Live In", as well. If you lined up the seemingly asexual Benigno alongside the masculine-looking Dr. Robert Ledgard, most people would peg the former as being gay. The manner in which Robert stares at the closed-circuit television feed of his prisoner would seem to confirm his heterosexuality. The mad doctor, however, is a freak; he's the inverse of Maxine, who says, "Behind the too-prominent brow and male pattern baldness, I sensed your feminine longing," to Lotte, lurking behind the famous actor's facade, as they f*ck. Maxine loves her, "but only when [she's] in Malkovich," whereas Robert doesn't yearn for his dead wife, but instead, the man who raped his daughter. When the geneticist forces himself on Vera(who is the spitting image of Gal), he express his latent homosexuality without giving anything away, since Vincente, is, from head to toe, all woman, save for the brain, the same place, by the way, where Craig ends up. At least Vincente gets to be his own puppet master, albeit it's a small consolation for "Being Gal Cruz". In the end, Maxine realizes that she can love Lotte without Malkovich serving as a conduit for her heart, whereas Dr. Ledgard dies before coming to terms with his unresolved feelings for dudes.… Expand

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

dodgingbullet

Sep 26, 2012

Almodovar did it again... excellent performances, a great interlaced story provided by a great direction and a script that can make Hollywood beg for creativity from this director... (Hollywood remake on the move?)

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

CitizenCharlie

Oct 25, 2011

You will enjoy particular films even more if you do not know very much beforehand; think The Sixth Sense or The Crying Game. Previews nowadays give away everything including the set up, the conflict, its climax, and sometimes even the ending all before you go and see it. The preview forYou will enjoy particular films even more if you do not know very much beforehand; think The Sixth Sense or The Crying Game. Previews nowadays give away everything including the set up, the conflict, its climax, and sometimes even the ending all before you go and see it. The preview for The Skin I Live In sidesteps the problem of giving things away by only showing select scenes set to music. There is no dialogue to listen to for the potential audience member to find out who is doing what and why. Whoever had the idea to limit this preview did everyone a favor.

I will only cover the basics of the plot because you really want to go into this film as â… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

tooplanx

Oct 18, 2013

This is a very bizarre movie that has a good idea at its core but is very badly executed. The first half of the movie is bizarre and makes little sense and offers the viewer nothing in the way of explaination of who the characters are and why things are happening. On top of this, theThis is a very bizarre movie that has a good idea at its core but is very badly executed. The first half of the movie is bizarre and makes little sense and offers the viewer nothing in the way of explaination of who the characters are and why things are happening. On top of this, the directing gives the first half a confusing impression: much of it seems like it is meant to be a farce and I was wondering if I was meant to be finding the bizarre antics funny. Only the thing is is that much of it is quite unsettling and contains a disturbingly creepy man who abuses his own mum and then rapes a young woman who has been locked in a room for a very long time. All this leaves the very confused as to what the hell is going on and what direction the movie is going in.

The second half at least begins to explain some of what we have seen in the first half and from that point onwards you can at least look forward to progression and plot development. Unfortunately, there are still plenty of things that still don't make much sense and the viewer is expected to accept some fairly large diversions from logical reality (people do things and react to situations in ways no normal real world person would, along with many other things that don't fit with normal reality).

About 2/3 of the way through you figure out where the movie is going (but still not really WHY) and then it is simply a case of watching the inevitable take place on the screen. The ending is unsatisfying and finishes at a point where there is actually some potential for interesting themes.

I feel I need to qualify my opinion with the fact that I watch many foreign language and independent bizarre films so it is not just the case that I am someone used to very mainstream conventional films.

While everyone has different opinions, I'm amazed that this film gets such universally positive reviews. I can't help feeling that perhaps this has something to do with it being a foreign language film which I think bluffs many pretentious people into thinking it 'must be good cus it's foreign', and if they don't like it they think it's because they don't understand the more 'intellectual' foreign ways. No, it's just not very good.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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