Review: The Skin I Live In

Pedro Almodovar's latest offering reunites him with Antonio Banderas who stars as Dr Robert Ledgard, a plastic surgeon whose life turns downhill, fueling a madness for progress and coping after his wife and his daughter throw themselves separately out the windows to their deaths. While his wife's death was due to her inability to cope with her face, disfigured badly after burning in a car, it is his daughter's death that hits him harder. Having witnessed her mother's death and alien-like face, daughter Norma retreats inside herself, becoming anti-social. Years later, she slowly comes out, but an (attempted) rape undoes all the progress she's made, before pushing her to end her life.


Furious, Ledgard kidnaps her attacker and submits him to surgical procedures that ties into the present story line where he's created a skin for a woman under his care. Twisted and disturbing, this is not a film for everyone.  


This film opened this year's Vancouver International Film Festival and plays for at least another week at the Fifth Ave Cinemas.


3/5