Directed by Pedro Amoldovar Starring Antonio Banderas, Marisa Paredes, Elena Anaya Duration: 1hr 57 min Cert:: 18
Tickets: €5
Ever since his wife was burned in a car crash, Dr. Robert Ledgard, an eminent plastic surgeon, has been interested in creating a new skin with which he could have saved her.
After twelve years, he manages to cultivate a skin that is a real shield against every assault. In addition to years of study and experimentation, Robert needed a further three things: no scruples, an accomplice and a human guinea pig. Scruples were never a problem. Marilia, the woman who looked after him from the day he was born, is his most faithful accomplice. And as for the human guinea pig....
Pedro Almodóvar read Thierry Jonquet's Tarantula, on which this film is based, about ten years before the film premiered. He described what attracted him in the novel as "the magnitude of Doctor Ledgard's vendetta".[5] This became the core of the adaptation, which over time moved further and further from the original plot of the novel. Almodóvar was inspired by Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face and the thriller films of Fritz Lang when he wrote the screenplay. The director announced the film project in 2002, when he envisioned Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz in the film's two leading roles, but he eventually settled on Banderas and Elena Anaya. The Skin I Live In was the first film Almodóvar and Banderas made together in 21 years, after having been regular collaborators in the 1980s. The film was produced through El Deseo for a budget of €10 million.
Elena Anaya received the Goya Award for Best Actress. The film won Best Film Not in the English Language at the 65th British Academy Film Awards; in previous years Almodóvar won that same award for his 1999 film All About My Mother and his 2002 film Talk to Her.
It also won awards from the following: Florida Film Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Language Film Oklahoma Film Critics Circle Awards 2011 Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards 2011 Prix Vulcain de l’Artiste Technicien
It is nominated for several Saturn Awards from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. The film also was nominated for the Best Foreign Language film in Golden Globe awards but lost to Persian director Asghar Farhadi's A Separation.
