Title: The Skin I Live In

Opens: October 14, 2011

Think of George Franju’s 1960 film “Eyes Without a Face” but with all the cinematic marvels that have come our way during the past half century, adding marvelously to this new tale of a mad scientist who has discovered a way to change not only the face but a patient’s entire body. Franju’s film plus all the stories we’ve heard about Americans who have been kidnapped and kept hidden from society for years—best described in the current best-seller “A Stolen Life: A Memoir,” about the 18-year imprisonment of Jaycee Lee Dugard. That’s not all. Pedro Almodovar’s new movie “The Skin I Live In,” recalls such classics as Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” which found Judy Barton, the spit-and-image of Scottie Ferguson’s dead wife Madeleine, fashioned into Madeleine’s demeanor, clothing, and looks. There’s more: you’ll be reminded of Dr. Frankenstein, recreating flesh into a monster, and if you’re a fan of “My Fair Lady,” you’ll know that George Bernard Shaw “Pygmalion” concerns the sculptor Galatea’s breathing life into a statue. “The Skin I Live In” is nothing if not based on some of society’s classic myths. The film succeeds beautifully because of the performances, Alberto Iglesias’s Hitchcockian music, and of José Luis Alcaine’s highly professional work behind the cameras.

As a theme, revenge has always done well in theater, literature and movies, beginning with the way that Clytemnestra takes vengeance on the hapless King Agamemnon for his infidelities, running through Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” the Jacobean tragedies that followed, and in a bevy of movies, the best including “Cape Fear,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Munich,” “The Crow,” and “Straw Dogs.” Almost all of these films find vengeance occurring within a year or two of the original crimes. “The Skin I Live In” is different: an obsession with vengeance seethes within the body of a kidnap victim for years.

The story, based on Thierry Jonquet’s novel “Mygale,” which has been adapted by the writer-director, centers on Brazil-born Dr. Robert Ledgard, an eminent plastic surgeon who practices his trade in Toledo, Spain. He has discovered a way to coat people who have lost much of their natural skin by covering their bodies with the skin of pigs—though no mention is made of his conjuring up this procedure by watching football. Though fellow scientists find this unethical (I can’t figure why), he needs to test his theory on people, and what better way to kill two birds with one stone than by helping his wife, who had been horribly burned in a car accident. When both wife and then his unbalanced daughter, Norma (Blanca Suárez), commit suicide, the doctor wants revenge—which he enacts via the use of the beautiful Vera (Elena Anaya) as his guinea pig. Vera is kept for years in a locked room in the doctor’s quarters for reasons that should not be revealed in any review.

The story unfolds in a series of time changes, one that takes us back to Brazil for a look at the doctor’s lunatic brother, Zeca (RobertoÁlamo), who makes his living by burgling jewelry. With the doc’s mother, Marilia (Marisa Paredas) serving as his devoted maid and the leading advocate of her mad surgeon’s activities, Dr. Ledgard, the kind of sociopath that would seem normal if you met him at a party but who cannot empathize with the people he treats, is free to work his sinister plastic surgery unmolested.

I could have done without some of the long monologues that serve as exposition, but otherwise, “The Skin I Live In” is not only as suspenseful as a typical Hitchcock movie like “Vertigo” but is a commentary on our highly developed society’s ubiquitous use of cameras—to photograph families, to act as surveillance on city streets, for security in our homes. We observe Dr. Ledgard watching his prey on a huge TV screen, particularly involving when photographer Alcaine zooms in to capture the victim’s head—which appears so large we almost expect her to eat her jailer alive.

This is Antonio Banderas’s first collaboration with director Almodovar in twenty years. Let’s see more of him!

Rated R. 117 minutes. (c) 2011 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

Overall – A-