The Skin I Live In

4.33
    The Skin I Live In
    2011

    Synopsis

    A brilliant plastic surgeon creates a synthetic skin that withstands any kind of damage. His guinea pig: a mysterious and volatile woman who holds the key to his obsession.

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    Cast

    • Antonio BanderasDr. Robert Ledgard
    • Elena AnayaVera Cruz
    • Marisa ParedesMarilia
    • Jan CornetVicente
    • Roberto ÁlamoZeca
    • Eduard FernándezFulgencio
    • José Luis GómezPresidente del Instituto de Biotecnología
    • Blanca SuárezNorma Ledgard
    • Susi SánchezMadre de Vicente
    • Bárbara LennieCristina

    Recommendations

    • 88

      Rolling Stone

      Even when the film's frigid elegance, perfectly captured by cinematographer José Luis Alcaine, becomes off-puttingly clinical, Almodóvar's passion burns through. The skin he lives in is alive to challenge no matter what warped form it takes.
    • 75

      The A.V. Club

      Had Almodóvar embraced the genre more, and changed his style to suit a story in which human beings get hacked up and transformed, he might've naturally found his way into a more potent, satisfying narrative, rather than one that dawdles and dead-ends.
    • 70

      Time

      There's no reason Banderas, after two Hollywood decades, couldn't do Robert justice; yet for a man whose mourning has turned to madness, he is strangely remote, lifeless, displaying neither rage nor poignancy. If Anaya is the heart at the center of the film, Banderas is the hole.
    • 63

      Slant Magazine

      This is a beautiful vision, but in telling too many flowery secrets, it's also one that unnecessarily keeps its queerness in the closet.
    • 60

      Variety

      Much as he did with Ruth Rendell's "Live Flesh," Almodovar has taken an ice-cold psychological thriller, penned by a novelist of far less humanistic temperament, and performed some stylistic surgery of his own, adding broad comic relief, overripe melodrama, outrageous asides and zesty girl-power uplift.
    • 60

      Time Out

      You never feel the burn in The Skin I Live In, certainly not the way you do in an immortal shocker like "Eyes Without a Face." It's almost as if Almodóvar wanted to reach out into a gory genre, but couldn't do so without wearing prissy gloves.
    • 50

      New York Magazine (Vulture)

      It's the only Almodóvar movie in which feeling, emotional or sexual, doesn't suffuse the imagery and hold the ramshackle melodrama together.
    • 50

      The Hollywood Reporter

      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.

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