The Skin I Live In

This was a movie that had me in awe as I had no clue that the characters were so interlinked.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

After three straight boring disasters, this film is an improvement. He is still no where near the top of his game as in "All About My Mother" or "Talk to Her" but at at least I was interested and did not walk out shaking my head and cursing. The story was too convoluted for the mild payoff that we got at the end but at least there was a payoff. Pedro is simply running out off his bag of kinky tricks as times are passing him by. Een the old style 1960's endings are starting to lose their allure. Still, it gave me hope that the next film may return us to the mountaintop we reached a decade ago. I am wiling to give it a try.

This is a very bizarre movie that has a good idea at its core but is very badly executed. The first half of the movie is bizarre and makes little sense and offers the viewer nothing in the way of explaination of who the characters are and why things are happening. On top of this, the directing gives the first half a confusing impression: much of it seems like it is meant to be a farce and I was wondering if I was meant to be finding the bizarre antics funny. Only the thing is is that much of it is quite unsettling and contains a disturbingly creepy man who abuses his own mum and then **** a young woman who has been locked in a room for a very long time. All this leaves the very confused as to what the hell is going on and what direction the movie is going in. The second half at least begins to explain some of what we have seen in the first half and from that point onwards you can at least look forward to progression and plot development. Unfortunately, there are still plenty of things that still don't make much sense and the viewer is expected to accept some fairly large diversions from logical reality (people do things and react to situations in ways no normal real world person would, along with many other things that don't fit with normal reality). About 2/3 of the way through you figure out where the movie is going (but still not really WHY) and then it is simply a case of watching the inevitable take place on the screen. The ending is unsatisfying and finishes at a point where there is actually some potential for interesting themes. I feel I need to qualify my opinion with the fact that I watch many foreign language and independent bizarre films so it is not just the case that I am someone used to very mainstream conventional films. While everyone has different opinions, I'm amazed that this film gets such universally positive reviews. I can't help feeling that perhaps this has something to do with it being a foreign language film which I think bluffs many pretentious people into thinking it 'must be good cus it's foreign', and if they don't like it they think it's because they don't understand the more 'intellectual' foreign ways. No, it's just not very good.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]