The Skin I Live In

Movie: The Skin I Live In

Genre: thriller – in Spanish with subtitles

Synopsis: Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas) is a brilliant plastic surgeon in Spain.  His wife is horribly burned in a tragic accident.  When she dies, Robert becomes obsessed with developing a synthetic skin to help burn victims.  Unfortunately, he chooses to skip a few of the standard testing steps and begins experimenting on a human.  The result is a beautiful female patient who is pretty much a prisoner in his private clinic.  The patient spends all of her days wearing a flesh-colored body suit in a locked room.  The movie gives us the background and reason(s) for his obsession and exactly how he performed his experimental testing on his patient.  By the end of the movie, the doctor’s plan is coming pretty severely unraveled,

My two cents: I put off seeing this movie because I was afraid it might get a bit too graphic.  Turns out my fear was unfounded.  While some parts did make me squirm a bit – nothing that was shown was the least bit graphic. The story line was fascinating – especially when some twists started entering into the story.  When I finally learned the whole story of the patient – it was jaw dropping.  If you like off-beat thrillers with a touch of horror, don’t pass this one up. If you like some good vengeance – it will be icing on the cake.

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