The Skin I Live In

Antonio Banderas and Elena Anaya in The Skin I Live In

2 1/2 Stars

Labeling a Pedro Almodovar movie his weirdest work yet sounds preposterous. He is, after all, one of our quirkiest and most idiosyncratic filmmakers.

Yet that's the skinny on the Spanish writer-director's The Skin I Live In, a kinky, twisted fairy tale for grownups that becomes an immediate contender for that particular distinction.

The Skin I Live In is a pulpy horror film of sorts, one in a Frankenstein-like science fiction vein, but it's not designed to scare or frighten or amaze as much as to quietly shock and creep out and disturb and make you squirm. All of which it does.

Antonia Banderas stars as Robert Ledgard, a brilliant plastic surgeon doing medical research at his lavish estate in suburban Toledo in Spain who has developed a synthetic skin that can withstand any kind of damage. It will not, for example, burn.

Ledgard is motivated by the fact that his beloved wife was burned in a car accident 12 years ago and took her own life because of the way she subsequently looked.

Although he claims to his colleagues and acquaintances that he has tested it only on mice, which is legal, we know better: he is holding a young woman (Elena Anaya) captive and using her as his guinea pig, which is decidedly not legal, to say the least.

What's going on? Well, let's just say that this film gives a whole new meaning to the word, "makeover."

To give you any more details would be unfair to the unpredictable turns that the narrative takes, some of them teetering on outright outrageousness. They're best preserved until they're sprung on the audience.

The prolific Almodovar (Broken Embraces, Talk To Her, Volver, All About My Mother) remains a master imagist: his film is nothing if not visually arresting, with vibrant colors and gliding camera moves holding us transfixed. And a sly storyteller: his flashback-heavy screenplay -- loosely based on the novel, Tarantula, by Thierry Jonquet -- touches on several abiding Almodovar themes, such as sexual identity, deceitful lies, family bonds, obsessiveness, and our preoccupation with surface beauty, even as it defies generic expectations.

But he stretches the perversity quotient level to such a degree that we're distracted by the sheer grotesqueness of several of the revelations. Don't be surprised if you hear yourself mutter, "You have got be kidding," when the Big Reveal occurs in Act Three. You'll admire Almodovar's nerve even if and as you ridicule his central conceit.

It's difficult to disagree with accusations that the plot tumbles over the top in the late going, as Almodovar reaches for the "far" in farfetched, but only a world-class director could even attempt to pull off this tricky a tone.

Banderas, starring in an Almodovar film for the first time in over 20 years (since Tie Me Up! Tie My Down! in 1990) isn't exactly stretched by the role, but he does contribute an effectively charismatic star turn as the relentless obsessive that recalls both James Stewart and Cary Grant in their respective roles in Hitchcock's Vertigo and North by Northwest.

A monumentally macabre melodrama, The Skin I Live In is a way for audacious auteur Pedro Almodovar to perform cosmetic surgery on our expectations and once again get under our skin.

MPAA rating: R (for disturbing violent content including sexual assault, strong sexuality, graphic nudity, drug use and language).

Running time: 1:57.

Cast: Antonio Banderas (Dr. Ledgard); Elena Anaya (Vera); Marisa Paredes (Marilia); Jan Cornet (Vicente); Roberto Alamo (Zeca); Blanca Suarez (Norma).

Credits: Directed by Pedro Almodovar; written by Pedro Almodovar and Agustin Almodovar, based on the novel "Tarantula" by Thierry Jonquet; produced by Agustin Almodovar and Esther Garcia. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

The Skin I Live In Movie Review - Antonio Banderas and Elena Anaya