Film Reaction: The Skin I Live In by Pedro Almodóvar

Pedro Almodóvar has done it again. The Skin I Live In, full of eye candy and horror, blew my mind.

If you know the work of Pedro Almodóvar, you know to expect the unexpected. You know to expect gender elasticity, human transformation and sexual sleight of eye and hand. You know there will be a steaming cup of desire along with something to twist that desire. You’ll anticipate at least one heart-stoppingly gorgeous character. Almodovar never masks his queer sensibility, his outsider point of view, or his fascination with morphing – and I never miss his films.

The Skin I Live In, however, came as a shock to me. For added to all the usual elements was a dark, noir attitude that pounced on one’s imagination and patience. Transformation becomes the product of torturous revenge and there is no one to love.

As a matter of psychic self-defense, I avoid all movies that include rape. When I inadvertently see such a scene it haunts me and distorts the rest of my viewing experience. But there are (at least) two such moments in The Skin I Live In, one almost sickly comical and another disturbingly ambiguous. The plot consequences of these rapes are profound, although the rapes themselves are founded on mistaken identity, passionate illusion and emotional misreading – not on the use of sexual violence to establish power. I was not distressed, but I’m still unraveling it all in my mind.

If you want your eyes and thoughts to be tickled, see this thriller with a friend or two who feel the same way, who have some consciousness and comfort with gender and sexuality in motion, and who will sit with you afterwards to pick through this exciting, complicated film. I just loved it and was lucky to see it with three of my very favorite brains and bodies.