Robert Ledgard is a respected plastic surgeon who, since the death of his wife—who committed suicide after suffering burns in a car accident—has been searching for a formula for synthetic skin more resistant than normal. To do this, Robert needs a test subject, Vera, whom he keeps locked in a room in his clinic/home and on whom he has now completed the experiments, despite the ostracism from the scientific community. With the sole complicity of Marilia, the woman who raised him, Robert is undecided about how to behave towards his prisoner once the period of experimentation is over, until one day the intrusion of a man into Ledgard's home will change the situation forever.
Many have hailed "La piel que habito" as the entry (albeit only tangential) of Pedro Almodóvar into the realms of thriller/horror. In reality, this statement should be taken with a grain of salt because, while it is true that the director of "Hable con ella" decides to tackle horror themes, inevitably bringing to mind stories of surgical madness like "Eyes Without a Face," "The Diabolical Dr. Satan," and "The Hand That Feeds the Dead," it is equally true that Almodóvar primarily makes a film in his own style. It may seem like a banal contradiction, but the Spanish director does not renounce his very personal signature even where it might have been a bit more appropriate to loosen the grip and be more flexible, in service of the genre. Therefore, "La piel que habito," in competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, carries all the strengths and weaknesses of the films that bear the name of the director of "La mala educación."
Starting from the novel by Thierry Jonquet "Tarantula" and freely adapting it together with his brother Agustin, Almodóvar creates a credible and complex figure of a mad doctor, as well as a complex and fascinating theme that moves the entire film. The thirst for knowledge and the desire to achieve scientific milestones are overwhelmed by the desire for revenge, the resentment for a private life that has gone awry, rich in disappointments and losses. Ledgard is a vengeful parent from rape & revenge before being a scientist and uses all his surgical expertise to carry out an incredible revenge that gradually turns into redemption for a sentimental life cut short. A scientist who turns into an avenger who in turn becomes a mad doctor from a B-movie that gradually turns into an irredeemable sentimental in search of a soulmate. Ledgard's character transformation is mirrored by the physical mutation of his victim, a being with an undefined and indefinite identity and nature that represents the crux of the story.
The material available to Almodóvar is outstanding, but there is a certain tendency of the author to dampen every enhancement of the story at the moment of its main climaxes. The foray into melodrama is acceptable and perhaps even necessary, but the way the love story between Robert and Vera is handled is not credible and too sudden. In short, six years of imprisonment pass in which the victim hates the jailer and tries to escape in every way, then suddenly there is the acceptance by Vera, not only emotional but also of her new physical condition. It all seems too unnatural and unbelievable, so the ending appears to the viewer absolutely telegraphed precisely because of this poor management of the reactions and behaviors of the characters. Furthermore, the introduction of grotesque elements also works against the film. I refer in particular to the character of Tigre and the long scene in which he is the protagonist, a pivotal moment in the story, as a trigger for the situational change, but the insistence on the grotesque and unbelievable image of the aforementioned Tigre, as well as his annoying behavior, completely dampens the intensity of the situation.
Another flaw of "La piel que habito" is the questionable management of the narrative order. Almodóvar decides to start from the center of the story, telling the viewer a seemingly difficult story. Then, at the minute mark, a very long flashback begins that explains what happened before, placing an important and almost successful plot twist. After the almost 40 minutes of flashback (which are undoubtedly the best part of the film), the story returns to the present (or rather, the future, since the film is set in 2012) for the predictable ending. Thus, the story appears disordered especially for the too long temporal blocks that almost lose the sense of time and tire the narrative fluidity. In this sense, the film would have certainly benefited if edited in chronological order, even if the plot twist would have been more difficult to manage.
Excellent are the two leading actors, Antonio Banderas—who returns to work with Almodóvar 11 years after "Los abrazos rotos"—gives an excellent performance as a mad doctor, romantic and subdued but at the same time determined, and equally good and intense is Elena Anaya ("Public Enemy No. 1") in the role of Vera, even if the screenplay makes the too quick resignation and acceptance of the change of her character less credible.
"La piel que habito" is Almodóvar in every way: elegant visual style, taste for interior decoration and costumes, foray into the theme of transsexuality, but also improbable family entanglements, propensity for melodrama "at all costs" and so on. If you like the cinema of the famous Spanish director, this film will certainly not disappoint you, but I think that if a subject of this kind had ended up in the hands of Cronenberg in the late 1980s and 1990s (that of "Dead Ringers" and "M. Butterfly," for example), "La piel que habito" would have been a film of quite another caliber.
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