This film’s plot should seem as ridiculous as bad plastic surgery; perhaps only Pedro Almodóvar could make it so compulsively watchable. Almodóvar never truly repeats himself yet makes movies that are somehow of a piece. Adapting a novel by Thierry Jonquet, he edges into science fiction territory—his main character (Antonio Banderas) is a surgeon specializing in face transplants and, yes, lab-grown skin—but inside of ten minutes the plot veers into more familiar themes. For Almodóvar, those include obsessive characters who follow their emotions to questionable ends. The surgeon’s own backstory unspools in a one-minute discourse by his housekeeper (Marisa Paredes) that replaces what might have been a 20-minute flashback in some other director’s hands.
The housekeeper is not just the housekeeper, having a history with her employer, and the young woman to whom she’s unspooling (Elena Anaya), the surgeon’s experimental subject, is not just an experimental subject, but we have to wait until well into the movie to learn who she is, how the doctor came to be keeping her locked away in his house, and how she got the burn scars that the doctor is erasing with his artificial skin. The movie’s title emphasizes identity, a theme of many an Almodóvar melodrama, though not in the same way as here. It’s full of the arresting visuals—the girl’s body suit, especially—for which Almodóvar is known. And it’s full of actors familiar from the director’s other work. Banderas had played other obsessive characters in films such as Matador and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! Paredes had starred or costarred in four Almodóvar films, including All About my Mother; and Anaya had appeared in Talk to Her. What it’s not is moving; the fast-paced melodrama will suck you in, and your allegiance will shift among the characters, but for all it’s plotting, there’s not enough history to these characters to make us care about them, or perhaps the story is just too creepy for it to be that kind of movie.
Definitely worth watching for Almodóvar fans, but maybe not the place to start, unless you have a taste for something a little twisted. And a pretty good twist it is.
IMDB link
viewed 11/23/11 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 11/23/11
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