By Dan Cohen, Santa Monica reporter
“The Skin I Live In”
When Hitchcock’s “Psycho” was released, back in 1960, it was such a radical departure from his forty or so prior films it felt like it came from another planet. For one thing the main character, played by Janet Leigh, met a grisly end 43 minutes in. The real identity of the other central role, played by Anthony Perkins, remained in doubt until the last few minutes. So it was almost impossible for audiences to invest in either of them, like Jimmy Stewart in “Vertigo,” or Cary Grant in “North By Northwest.” And yet the film was a huge hit.
It took years for critics to get past the shocks, like the shower sequence or the climax in the basement, to see the black comedy at the heart of “Psycho,” and how it related to the rest of Hitchcock’s work. Still, the movie stands apart for its refusal to provide a solid, emotional center.
Only a master story teller can defy an audience’s need for a place to put its emotions. Few directors are willing to go that route, because it usually ends in both critical and commercial failure. Now comes Pedro Almodovar, challenging his many admirers with the cold but skillful “The Skin I Live In,” a movie that drags us around by the nose but keeps us at arms distance from its principal characters.
Antonio Banderas plays a doctor/experimental scientist who keeps a beautiful young woman, (Elena Anaya,) imprisoned in a secluded villa on the outskirts of Toledo, Spain. The tone is quickly set by the stark contrast between its stately exterior, and the modish, clinical interior. The entire lab is dedicated to a single patient, the stunning and morose Vera, who we are led to believe, is being treated for some kind of exotic disease. The almost wordless opening follows a pattern we’ve seen in many other thrillers. And it grabs you right away.
But it’s not quite what it seems. The doctor is using the woman to perfect a new, radical form of human skin. For a while it seems he’s got it all under control. Then a guy in a Halloweeny tiger suit, with an almost absurd bulge in the groin, breaks in, restrains the maid/caretaker, and rapes the girl. Turns out this criminal, with a hideously scarred face, is the doctor’s half brother. Things get more complicated as the film spins back six years, when the real trouble began.
The girl’s true identity, and her part in the ongoing psychodrama, has as much to do with the doctor’s past as his current experiments. There’s an undercurrent of dark comedy in all this, which occasionally surfaces through an offhand aside. For the most part, however, the tone is studiously dark, almost like a B movie from the fifties. Except “Skin” is way better directed than the typical genre item.
The visual style is at once striking and matter of fact. Cinematographer Jose Luis Alcaine, who shot “Volver” and “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” (among others) delivers the vivid color palate that’s become one of Almodovars’ several signatures. And while there are few moments of fantasy, highlights of many of his earlier films, the moment to moment direction is inspired and assured.
The larger problems have to do, not so much with the plot, but the underpinnings that drive it; they’re sketchy at best. Sixty years ago Norman Bates dual identity was enough to hang an entire story. Since then movies have exploited every conceivable human perversity. At this point we need something more substantive than a gender twist to satisfy us. This latest Almodovar keeps to plot, with few of the personal digressions that have made the scripts for “Broken Embraces,” or “Talk to Her” so interesting. It’s also lacking in the self reflective humor that warmed even his darkest films.
More than once I thought that the icy mechanics of “The Skin I Live In” might work better in an opera. The score (by Alberto Iglesias, another Almodovar regular), as stirring and elaborate as any I can remember, seems to invite the characters to break into song. But they don’t, and the movie’s twists and turns fail to deliver an emotional core. Still, it has energy to spare. I didn’t love it, but I was hooked from the first frame. Even the minor work of this great filmmaker is compelling.
MARTHA, MARCY, MAY, MARLENE
This is the most off putting title of the year. But the movie is intriguing; a low budget thriller of sorts, with a genuinely disturbing edge. It premiered at this years’ Sundance festival. Now it’s making the rounds at the art cinemas. Meaning, you may have to see the DVD.
Right from the first shots writer/director Sean Durkin makes it clear that he’s in no hurry. But his movie isn’t slow as much as deliberate. There are few fast cuts to jerk up the action or to imply jeopardy when there is none. And he maintains that level of integrity throughout.
The farm we see in the first sequence is some kind of commune. Its’ members seem to go about their chores with cheerful resolve. But at night, the half dozen female residents sleep in the same room, a sign that something’s not quite right. Then, one of the women, Martha, (Elizabeth Olsen) slips away just before dawn. She’s followed by a male resident who tries to get her back. She refuses. Why, we’re not sure.
Martha uses a public phone to call for help; the absence of a cell phone is another troubling sign. Soon she’s staying with her older sister Sara and Sara’s British husband who are spending the summer at a lakeside rental. The sisters haven’t seen each other in a while, so their relationship is muddy. That’s one cause of tension. Then there’s her more recent history.
The movie toggles back and forth between her liberated present and her subjugation on the farm, under the thumb of a quietly manipulative leader, effectively played by John Hawkes. Hawkes made strong impressions in “Winters’ Bone”, “You, Me, and Everyone We Know”, and TV’s “Deadwood.” He’s like a scruffy, younger Sean Penn, but a lot more laid back, especially when it comes to expressing menace.
Durkin takes chances with the narrative. Marthas’ problems started long before the story begins, and no attempt is made to backtrack far enough to get much insight into how or why she became bonded to Hawkes’ wily dictator. But we’re teased with increasingly disturbing moments, as her erratic, uncontrollable behavior becomes a threat to not only the sister and her husband, but herself. Through it all we’re alternately attracted and repelled, but always involved.
In a key sequence Martha crawls into her sisters’ bed while she and her husband are having sex. When confronted Martha doesn’t seem to understand the level of her impropriety. But is that a function of her time at the commune or a more basic malfunction in her personal makeup? The script doesn’t say. But the frequent flashbacks, which comprise close to half the movie, suggest the kind of perversity that continues to impact her wounded psyche.
Elizabeth Olsen’s performance has received well deserved attention. Her open, round face, especially at rest, hardly suggests the terror that can suddenly distort it. Sarah Paulson is sympathetic as the sister, struggling to make peace with a damaged sibling at the same time she to figure out how much of it is her own fault.
The ending, which comes abruptly, has proved difficult for most audiences. For my taste it could have been edited better, but I’m with it in spirit. In any event it hardly detracts from the pleasures of this unsettling movie.
Keep your eyes open for a play date at the local art theater.
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, part 1
Teenagers of all ages, who have been salivating for the moment when the vampire and human flesh of Edward Cullen and Bella Swan finally commingle, get their hearts desire in the fourth installment of the unstoppable “Twilight” series, “Breaking Dawn.”
True fans already know what happens; they long since gobbled up Stephenie Meyers ‘tweener’ novels. But seeing Bella and Edward consummate their smoldering passion, embodied by Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattison, is what they’re really after. If at this point you don’t know what I’m talking about, you should probably skip the rest of this.
“Breaking Dawn, part 1,” isn’t as compelling as the first “Twilight,” which had the advantage of novelty and Catherine Hardwicke’s imaginative direction. But it isn’t as clumsy as the second, or as uneven as the much improved third. Director Bill Condon, the maker of “Gods and Monsters,” and “Kinsey,” was a smart choice. He isn’t a wild card like David Slade, who put an idiosyncratic stamp on the prior installment, “Eclipse.” Condon is more dramatist than stylist, a good choice considering where the series was headed.
The actual wedding, an elaborate set piece that consumes almost half the movie’s running time, seems more akin to the kind of party studio executives contrive than a ceremony Edward and Bella would have chosen. But alright, it gives the excellent supporting cast a chance to dress up, and for the living and living dead to break bread together.
A threat arrives, in the form of the spurned suitor/werewolf played by Taylor Lautner. But at this point it’s become painfully evident that Lautner, whether due to bad lines or limited abilities, never had a chance to separate Stewart and Pattison. As icons and performers they’re playing in a different league.
Bella and Edwards’ vows are just the prelude to the voyeur’s real interest, their honeymoon. And this one is straight out of reality TV. It’s here that “Breaking Dawn” tiptoes, with great relish, to the very limits of its PG-13 rating. Condon is up to the challenge; he’s respectful of the key moments between the two and wise enough to season them with a smidgeon of wit.
The life threatening consequences, which follow rapidly, suggest that either Bella throws all caution to the wind, or that vampire sperm trumps birth control. No explanation is given, but I would have paid double the ticket price to hear what the teenagers sitting next to me made of it. In any case, the movie builds to a suspenseful cliffhanger that will not be resolved until “Breaking Dawn, part 2” comes out, in about nine months. We’ll be waiting.
