Oh, Pedro. You trot the horror line in a lot of your films. But I guess The Skin I Live In is your most genre outing yet.
I usually do not write about a film with specific reference to it’s director. But you Pedro, or Almodóvar as you seem to like to be called, are an exception.
The Skin I Live In is not a prima facie horror movie. Apologies, law school terms are creeping into my vocabulary. That is to say at first sight, or first viewing, the film does not exactly adhere to any particular genre standard.
But that is not to say it is not jarring and deeply unsettling. Or horrifying. Because it is, Pedro. You have created something of an anomaly; a film that makes the viewer think they aren’t watching a horror movie, when really they are.
And I applaud you for that.
There are certain motifs and concepts that seem to interest you, and these pervade your latest outing. Suffice it to say I cannot at all comment on them here without giving away many integral, unsettling parts of your film.
You animate your tale with riveting, lively dialogue. Your words ring true and poetic in my ears, even through the language filter of your mother tongue to mine.
You illicit such visceral performances out your actors so as to draw me in and make me feel for them.
And you just film things so well.
I fear horror enthusiasts will be divided on this one. There are certain subtleties in your work that will inarguably evade some viewers. I would wager though that these are the people who would be dissuaded by watching a foreign language film in the first place.
But indeed, November seems to be a month appropriate for such cinematic outings. With your film and Lars Von Trier’s latest both premiering to the Canadian public.
That is not to equate you with Von Trier at all, good Pedro. All I mean is that this is not August, the cinematic dumping ground. This is November. The world around us is decaying, changing, getting ready for the bitterness of winter.
I doubt you know anything of this, Pedro. I do not think that you have experienced a Canadian, Ottawan winter, but for me your film is drenched in all of the feelings that strike me at this most doleful of times.
I do fear that some viewers who adhere to critically oriented feminist or queer theory perspectives will take what you have done in way that I do not think you intended.
And I would go so far as to say that any such reading of your film’s content is a rather closed minded, self serving and ultimately fruitless view of your work.
But then, as we all know, there are those who are never satisfied, who must criticize the expression of subject matter such as this in their own narrow and purposive way.
You are an artist, Pedro. And your art is prefaced on the human condition, which is sometimes ugly and bleak and uncompromisingly disturbing.
I would thus offer a very simple answer to those who would criticize your work here; artistic expression is valid and enriching so long as it brings forth its content in good faith.
Any detractions from what you have done here are mired in the very closed mindedness such critics would purport themselves to struggle against.
Though I would say that are triggers here which may affect certain people. But that in and of itself, I don't think, is enough of a basis for criticism.
This is not a love letter, Pedro. Though it may seem as though it is.
I would beg of you though, my friend Pedro, to please work with Gael Garcia Bernal again. And in doing so, to please direct him to take his clothes of. And to maybe say into the camera that he wants me.
Please, keep this in mind as you go upon your journey.
This is indeed one of those films that the less you say about it the better. So, I will not say anymore except that I applaud you.
Five out five stuck, sewn together and transgenic thumbs.
xoxo
D-bag
