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Old 11-08-2016, 09:50 PM   #188
teh b0lly!!1
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The Skin I Live In

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i'd been meaning to get into Almodovar for a while, and while this isn't considered one of his top films, what i heard about it intrigued me, especially since real psychological horror is one of my fav genres, so i thought it might make a good starting point.

so well, for starters, it probably wasn't.

although it's a film of undeniable quality (in the sense that you can 'feel' it's from a prestigious director, like a thick, heavily printed page from an expensive magazine), and it definitely deals with a lot of heavily affecting shit, i found it to be ultimately somewhat unremarkable. it just came and went, and i can't say it left any serious impression on me. i usually write these barely coherent text walls within 1-2 days tops of when i'd seen a film, just to take some time to process what i'd watched, but with this one it's been like a week, and i still don't think i have anything more to say about it than i did initially.

it's visually very good (probably the strongest feature of this film), and has many compelling visual themes. the design conveys a certain menace - everything is very crisp, cold and clean. the medical procedures in particular are powerfully shot and designed.

i also thought Antonio Banderas was a curious choice for the lead role. i kind of enjoyed the thought of him playing a character that does horrendously fucked up thing in the name of his undying love for his wife - because i thought his presence could convey both a certain genuine warmness, and menace on the other hand. i thought he'd nail it, but was kinda disappointed tbh - his acting was very flat, and didn't convey much of anything at all. i later read that he showed up on set trying to act in a very 'psycho' way, and almodovar told him to turn it down considerably, saying he was looking for a much more composed villain (i'm paraphrasing). i guess the end result was a jarring character that does really terrible shit, but is just too bland in its behavior, and doesn't really appear motivated by anything except anger. which is just a terrible waste.

another big flaw\interesting point for me, was the storytelling. the story is fairly complex - it involves a lot of history involving various independent characters, and is told in a (purposely) very convoluted way.

so basically, for about the first half of the film, you're all mixed up about what you're seeing, not being exactly sure what's happening - until about midway through the film, comes a long dialogue (soliloquy) heavy scene where one character fills the other character up on all the details.

while i found this a kind of ballsy and refreshing approach to filmmaking, ultimately i thought it threw the entire film off. you can't have such a large portion of the plot just be passed off as a voiceover, putting everything you'd seen up until that point into context. it's jarring, and feels like lazy, or even wrongful storytelling (i.e perhaps almodovar's priorities should have been different with his time management, and make more room for actual exposition). i guess this is where you really see that this film is an adaptation of a book. it just doesn't work - films are there to tell the story themselves, not to have the plot read out to the viewers by a character.

that's about it. i struggle to find much else to say about this film. which is really an insult to a film if a ramble mcramblepants like myself can't find anything else to say about it besides two things. it's skillfully made, it's creepy and fucked up and terrible, it speaks about many different and interesting aspects of humanity - what defines identity, how love can drive you off the rails into insanity, control, sexuality - but it just ended up being forgettable to me.

in other news, i have download the best app ever, which allows me to control vlc player from my cell phone through wifi. i was going to buy a wireless keyboard\mouse set for that shit - this is awesome. no more getting up and pressing space to pause. hiyooo.

 
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