The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodovar, 2011)

[knives]

I think it also plays to the themes of excusing guilt with revenge. Many specifics of the plot are caused by characters trying to channel things they feel they did wrong toward those that did wrong to them.

[R0lf]

Spoiler

I think the decision to make him a beautiful woman comes from the question Marisa Paredes keeps asking regarding what they are going to do with Vincent - and that they'll have to kill him. It originally started just as a sex change but after the sex change Banderas doesn't want to kill him and can't let him go so the longer Vincent is there the further the experiment goes. They also make it clear at the start of the movie that Banderas doesn't really have any concrete plan.

I'd hazard a guess that due to the nature of his wife's injuries that a lot of the research he had done into facial reconstruction was based on her face and he used that face because it was already designed?

[colinr0380]

Off topic but I was rewatching that Tom Berenger/Greta Scacchi thriller Shattered over the weekend and was reminded a little of The Skin I Live In in its twist:

Spoiler

In Shattered it is not an enforced sex change but after the car crash which opens the film causing memory loss and the need for extensive plastic surgery Berenger returns to live with Scacchi and slowly finds out that he is not actually her husband but actually her lover who was so disfigured in the crash that Scacchi took the opportunity to have the doctors remould into her (murdered) husband's likeness!

(Actually talking about Shattered in those terms makes me feel it is an erotic thriller version of Rebecca, even down to the incriminating body being in a shipwreck!)

[samantha]

Thanks for your replies to my question.
One more thing I wondered when watching the film is whether Vincent is always thinking of escaping or whether at some point he is giving up and starting to accept his new identity and that life or whether he has a plan to escape in mind the whole time through.

Here is what makes me struggle:
On the one handside, Vera promises Robert that she won't leave him after he told her that she was free and he promised to keep the doors open. She serves breakfast and the camera is showing the knife as if she would use it, but then she doesn't.
When Robert's colleague suspects him of kidnapping and forcing Vincent to the gender change, Vera defends Robert and at night sleeps with him.

Did Vincen/Vera consider for a short time to accept and live this life and then he/she got redirected to his/her old plan through a certain situation?
Two possible turning points I see that could have lead to emphasize/strengthen/redirect Vincent/Vera to his decision:
- when Vera takes the tablet with breakfast out of the lift and therefore enters into her previous room. She watches the drawings on the wall, the art on the table, the camera bullet
- when Vera sees the image of Vincent in the newspaper, she suddenly seems very nervous and asks Robert quickly for a cigarette.

On the other handside, when she comes back from shopping with Marisa, she already wears the dress from Vincent mother's shop (-where did she get it from anyway?). Also the lubricant- did she plan to have sex with him and insinuate to need the cream? I mean, she bought both, the dress and the lubricant it in the city center before seeing Vincent's photo in the newspaper.

It is not highly important to understand the film, I am just wondering if Vincent was about to give up on his own identity at some point or if he was putting everything in place to finally aim his goal.

[Luke M]

Spoiler

The film appeared to allude to Vera escaping based on seeing the photo of Vincent in the newspaper. As if prior to seeing the photo, she was accepting of the life with Robert. That was not my impression but it seemed like Almodovar made a case for it.

[Steven H]

I loved this film but have the same reservations as Matt, though I would have said "boring and unnecessary gunplay" because I'm not as articulate. But anyway, loved it. One thing I haven't seen mentioned is

Spoiler

after the rape scene, when Zeca is shot by Ledguard, is the symbolism of the blood drenching the bed Vera Cruz was brutally deflowered on a bit *TOO MUCH* or "fine"? Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it.