| The Skin I Live In | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Spanish | La piel que habito |
| Directed by | Pedro Almodóvar |
| Screenplay by | Pedro Almodóvar Agustín Almodóvar[a] |
| Based on | Tarantula byThierry Jonquet |
| Produced by |
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| Starring | |
| Cinematography | José Luis Alcaine |
| Edited by | José Salcedo |
| Music by | Alberto Iglesias |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Entertainment España |
Release dates |
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Running time | 120 minutes[1] |
| Country | Spain |
| Language | Spanish |
| Budget | $13.5 million[2] |
| Box office | $30.8 million[3] |
The Skin I Live In (Spanish:La piel que habito) is a 2011 Spanishpsychological thriller film written and directed byPedro Almodóvar, starringAntonio Banderas,Elena Anaya,Marisa Paredes,Jan Cornet andRoberto Álamo. It is based onThierry Jonquet's 1984 novelMygale, first published in French and then in English under the titleTarantula.[2][4]
Almodóvar has described the film as "a horror story without screams or frights".[5] The film was the first collaboration in 21 years between Almodóvar and Banderas sinceTie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990).[6] It premiered in May 2011 in competition at the64th Cannes Film Festival, and wonBest Film Not in the English Language at the65th BAFTA Awards. It was also nominated for theGolden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and 16Goya Awards.
Plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard successfully cultivates anartificial skin resistant to burns and insect bites. Calling it "Gal", he claims to be testing it onathymic mice. Presenting at a medical symposium, Ledgard privately discloses that he has conducted illegaltransgenic experiments on humans. He is forbidden to continue with his research.
On his secluded estate, Ledgard holds captive a young woman named Vera with the help of his servant, Marilia. There he continues his illegal experiments.
While Ledgard is out, Marilia's estranged son, Zeca, arrives after having committed a robbery. He asks Marilia to hide him for a few days. Seeing Vera on Ledgard's security camera screens, Zeca mistakes her for Ledgard's deceased wife, Gal, and demands to see her in person. When Marilia refuses, Zeca binds and gags Marilia and then rapes Vera. Ledgard arrives and kills Zeca.
While Ledgard disposes of Zeca's corpse, Marilia reveals to Vera that both Zeca and Ledgard are half-brothers and her sons, unknown to them. Ledgard was adopted by Marilia's employers, though raised by Marilia, and later went to medical school and married a woman named Gal. Raised without privilege as Marilia’s son, Zeca eventually left to live in the streets and smuggle drugs. When Zeca returned years later, Gal fell in love with him. Zeca and Gal decided to run off together but were involved in a car crash in which Gal was badly burnt. Assuming Gal to be dead, Zeca left the scene of the accident. Ledgard took Gal home, keeping her in total darkness, without any mirror, to hide her burn scars. One day, while hearing her daughter Norma singing in the garden, Gal saw her own reflection in the window. Traumatized by the sight, Gal jumped to her death in front of Norma.
After disposing of Zeca’s corpse, in the present, Ledgard returns and spends the night with an acquiescent Vera. Ledgard dreams of the night of a wedding six years earlier, when he found his daughter Norma unconscious on the ground, having been raped. Mentally unstable after witnessing her mother's suicide, under effects of psychosis medication, a disoriented Norma saw Ledgard bending over her and mistakenly believed he raped her. Developing a fear of all men, Norma spent years in a mental health facility, eventually committing suicide as her mother had.
Simultaneously in the present, Vera, too, dreams of the same event. Vicente (whose identity is disclosed later) crashed the wedding and met Norma. In the garden, under the influence of drugs, Norma began to take off her clothes. Vicente kissed her, and they lay down on the ground engaging in sexual activity that confused and overwhelmed Norma. When ambient music changed to the song Norma was singing whenshe witnessed her mother's suicide, Norma started screaming. Vicente attempted to hush her screams, knocking her unconscious. Vicente fled the scene, unaware that Ledgard saw him leave on his motorbike.
Tracking down Vicente, Ledgard kidnapped him and held him captive, brutalizing him over a prolonged period. As punishment for raping his daughter, Ledgard made Vicente a human guinea pig for his experiments. Over a period of six years, Ledgard physically transformed Vicente into a replica of his late wife, usingtransgenesis and shaping Vicente’s physical appearance—moulding a vagina, breasts, hips, buttocks, and feminine voice—and renaming him Vera.
In the present, Ledgard's new relationship with Vera dismays Marilia, who does not trust Vera. Fulgencio, one of Ledgard's colleagues, reads a news story about the missing Vicente and recognizes him in Vera. He accuses Ledgard of falsifying Vicente's consent and of experimenting on him. Vera, who overhears their conversation, tells Fulgencio that she is here by her own free will, denies being Vicente, and says that she always was a woman. After Fulgencio leaves, Vera notices a photograph of himself as Vicente attached to the news story about missing persons. During the night, Ledgard and Vera start having sex, but Vera tells him that it is still painful after Zeca's rape. Ostensibly going downstairs to find lubricant, Vera retrieves Ledgard's gun and kills him. Marilia, alerted by the sound of the shot, barges into the bedroom with her own pistol in hand and finds her son Ledgard dead on the bed. Vera, who is hiding under the bed, shoots and kills Marilia. With her final breath, Marilia says "I knew it."
Freed from captivity and the need to play along with Ledgard's whims, Vicente returns to his mother's dress shop for the first time since being kidnapped. Tearfully, he tells his lesbian ex-colleague Cristina (whom Vicente had loved six years prior) of his kidnapping, forced sex change, and the murders. As his mother enters the room, Vicente quietly reveals his identity to them: "I am Vicente."
Pedro Almodóvar readThierry Jonquet'sTarantula approximately ten years before the film premiered. He described what attracted him in the novel as "the magnitude of Doctor Ledgard'svendetta".[7] This became the core of the adaptation, which over time moved further and further from the original plot of the novel. Almodóvar was inspired byGeorges Franju'sEyes Without a Face and thethriller films ofFritz Lang when he wrote the screenplay.[7]
The director announced the project in 2002, when he envisionedAntonio Banderas andPenélope Cruz in the film's two leading roles, but eventually cast Banderas andElena Anaya.[8]The Skin I Live In was the first film Almodóvar and Banderas made together in 21 years, after having been regular collaborators in the 1980s. The film was produced throughEl Deseo for a budget of €10 million.[2]
Principal photography began 23 August 2010 and ended almost four months later.[2][9] Filming locations includedSantiago de Compostela, Madrid, and a country house outsideToledo.[2]
The filmpremiered on 19 May 2011 in competition at the2011 Cannes Film Festival.[10] Due to developments in the industry of film distribution, El Deseo decided to abandon their previous release strategy for Almodóvar's works. The director's films had in the past usually been released in Spanish theatres in the spring and internationally during the last quarter of the year.The Skin I Live In was released worldwide in the autumn. The British release was 26 August 2011 through20th Century Fox.[11] In Spain it premiered on 2 September 2011.[9] The film was released in the United States on 14 October the same year in a limited run throughSony Pictures Classics[12] following its American premiere at the 49thNew York Film Festival on 12 October 2011.[13]
On the review aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, the film holds an 82% approval rating based on reviews from 179 critics, with an average rating of 7.5 out of 10. The site's summary reads "The Skin I Live In lacks Almodóvar's famously charged romance, replaced with a wonderfully bizarre and unpredictable detour intoarthouse ick".[14]Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 70 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[15]
In May 2011, Kirk Honeycutt, writing forThe Hollywood Reporter, said "Along with such usual Almodóvar obsessions as betrayal, anxiety, loneliness,sexual identity, and death, the Spanish director has added a science-fiction element that verges on horror. But like many lab experiments, this melodramatic hybrid makes for an unstable fusion. Only someone as talented as Almodóvar could have mixed such elements without blowing up an entire movie." Honeycutt continued: "The film's design, costumes and music, especially Alberto Iglesias' music, present a lushly beautiful setting, which is nonetheless a prison and house of horror. Almodóvar pumps his movie full of deadly earnestness and heady emotions."[16] David Gritten notes Almodóvar "reaches out tentatively into unexplored genre territory—horror...Yet despite squirm-worthy moments ... the promise of horror gives way to Almodóvar's broader, familiar preoccupations: identity, blood ties, disguises and genetic traits." According to Gritten, "A list of the story's various elements— date rape, murder, secrets, lies, mystery parents, gender ambiguity, unbreakable emotional bonds—confirmsThe Skin I Live In as essentially amelodrama. Yet Almodóvar's story-telling is nowhere near as shrill as it once was: as a mature artist, he has refined his skills to a point where thesesoap-operatropes assimilate smoothly into a complex whole....Typically for Almodóvar, it all looks ravishing, thanks to production designer Antxon Gómez and cinematographerJosé Luis Alcaine. All three men have the gift of investing mundane objects with a unique sheen; here even surgical instruments, about to be used malevolently, assume a dreamy, otherworldly quality.The Skin I Live In is the work of a master near the top of his game."[17]
Upon its UK premiere,Peter Bradshaw gave it four of five stars, calling it "fantastically twisted" and "a truly macabre suspense thriller"—"Banderas is a wonderfully charismatic leading man; Almodóvar has found in him whatHitchcock found inCary Grant. He is stylish, debonair, but with a chilling touch of determination and menace."[18]
In an October 2011New York Times Critics' Pick review,Manohla Dargis called the film "an existential mystery, a melodramatic thriller, a medical horror film or just a polymorphous extravaganza"; according to Dargis:[19]
It takes time to get a handle on the story (and even then, your grip may not be secure), though it's instantly clear that something is jumping beneath the surface here, threatening to burst forth. Vera's plight and the temporal shifts help create an air of unease and barely controlled chaos, an unsettling vibe that becomes spooky when Ledgard puts on a white lab coat and begins doing strange things with blood....There are times inThe Skin I Live In when it feels as if the whole thing will fly into pieces, as complication is piled onto complication, and new characters and intrigues are introduced amid horror, melodrama and slapstick.... [Yet] Mr. Almodóvar's control remains virtuosic and the film hangs together completely, secured by Vera and Ledgard and a relationship that's aPandora's box from which identity, gender, sex and desire spring.
Dana Stevens noted it was Almodóvar's "first attempt to blend elements of the horror genre with the high-camp, gender-bending melodrama that's become his stock in trade"; she called it "visually lush and thematically ambitious", a film that "unfolds with a clinical chill we're unaccustomed to feeling in this director's films.The Skin I Live In is a math problem, not a poem. Still, what an elegant proof it is." Stevens called it a "meditation on profound themes: memory, grief, violence, degradation, and survival", a "multigenerational melodrama [that] slowly fuse[s] into a coherent (if wackily improbable) whole", offering "aesthetic and intellectual gratification, but little in the way of emotional punch."[20]The New Yorker ranked the film at No. 25 on their list of "The 26 best films of 2011".[21]
In 2024, filmmakerQuentin Tarantino named it one of the best films of the 21st century.[22]
Anaya received theGoya Award for Best Actress. The film wonBest Film Not in the English Language at the65th British Academy Film Awards; in previous years Almodóvar won that same award forhis 1999 filmAll About My Mother andhis 2002 filmTalk to Her.
| Awards Group | Category | Recipient | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Actors and Actresses Union Awards[23][24] | Best Film Actress in a Leading Role | Elena Anaya | Nominated |
| Best Film Actor in a Leading Role | Antonio Banderas | Nominated | |
| Best Film Actress in a Minor Role | Marisa Paredes | Nominated | |
| Susi Sánchez | Nominated | ||
| Best New Actor | Jan Cornet | Won | |
| Argentinean Film Critics Association Awards | Best Foreign Film | Nominated | |
| Australian Film Critics Association | Best Overseas Film (English Language)[25][26] | Nominated | |
| BAFTA Awards | Best Film Not in the English Language | Won | |
| British Independent Film Awards | Best Foreign Film | Nominated | |
| Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards | Best Foreign Film | Nominated | |
| Cannes Film Festival | Palme d'Or | Pedro Almodóvar | Nominated |
| Chicago Film Critics Association Awards | Best Foreign Film | Nominated | |
| Cinema Writers Circle Awards | Best Actress | Elana Anaya | Nominated |
| Best Cinematography | Nominated | ||
| Best Editing | Nominated | ||
| Best Score | Nominated | ||
| Best Screenplay | Nominated | ||
| Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Awards | Best Foreign Film | Won | |
| European Film Awards | Best Composer | Nominated | |
| Best Production | Nominated | ||
| Fangoria Chainsaw Awards | Best Actor | Antonio Banderas | Won |
| Best Foreign Film | 3rd place | ||
| Best Supporting Actress | Elena Anaya | 3rd place | |
| Best Screenplay | Nominated | ||
| Florida Film Critics Circle Awards | Best Foreign Film | Won | |
| Fotogramas de Plata | Best Actress | Elena Anaya | Won |
| Best Actor | Antonio Banderas | Nominated | |
| Golden Globes | Best Foreign Film | Nominated | |
| Goya Awards | Best Actress | Elena Anaya | Won |
| Best Make-Up | Won | ||
| Best New Actor | Jan Cornet | Won | |
| Best Score | Won | ||
| Best Actor | Antonio Banderas | Nominated | |
| Best Cinematography | Nominated | ||
| Best Costume Design | Nominated | ||
| Best Director | Nominated | ||
| Best Editing | Nominated | ||
| Best Film | Nominated | ||
| Best New Actress | Blanca Suárez | Nominated | |
| Best Production | Nominated | ||
| Best Production Supervision | Nominated | ||
| Best Screenplay | Nominated | ||
| Best Sound | Nominated | ||
| Best Effects | Nominated | ||
| London Critics Circle Film Awards | Foreign Language Film of the Year | Nominated | |
| Technical Achievement | Nominated | ||
| Online Film Critics Society Awards | Best Foreign Film | Nominated | |
| Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards | Best Foreign Film | Won | |
| Sant Jordi Awards | Best Film | Won | |
| Best Actress | Elena Ayana | 2nd Place | |
| Saturn Award | Best International Film | Won | |
| Best Actor | Antonio Banderas | Nominated | |
| Best Make-Up | Nominated | ||
| Best Supporting Actress | Elena Anaya | Nominated | |
| Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards | Best Foreign Film | 2nd Place | |
| Spanish Actors Union | Best Male Newcomer | Jan Cornet | Won |
| Best Female Performance | Elena Ayana | Nominated | |
| Best Male Performance | Antonio Banderas | Nominated | |
| Best Female in Minor Performance | Marisa Paredes | Nominated | |
| Best Female in Minor Performance | Susi Sánchez | Nominated | |
| Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Awards | Best Foreign Film | Won | |
| World Soundtrack Awards 2012 | Best Composer of the Year | Alberto Iglesias | Won |
| New York Film Critics Circle Awards | Best Foreign Language Film | Nominated |
