In Somebody Else’s Skin

Pedro Almodóvar makes his fifth appearance in Cannes. His fourth In Competition offering, La Piel que Habito, is a disturbing film noir which reunited him with Antonio Banderas 20 years after Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

Inspired by the novel Mygale by French author Thierry Jonquet, the Spanish director explores new territory in adding a quasi-horror story to his filmography, navigating a new style characterised by violence, vengeance and twisted motives. While this is his first foray into directing a thriller-cum-horror, he has previously produced thrillers by Alex de la Iglesia (Acción mutante, 1992) and Guillermo Del Toro (The Devil’s Backbone, 2001).

Eager to work with Antonio Banderas again for a number of years now, Almodóvar seized the opportunity to direct the actor in his role as Robert Ledgard, a psychopathic surgeon who holds a young woman hostage to serve as guinea pig. He wants her to model a skin of his own creation, the invention that could have saved the life of his wife a dozen years earlier after a car accident left her disfigured.

This is the fifth time Antonio Banderas and Pedro Almodóvar have worked together, ending the long hiatus that followed their previous collaborations, Matador (1986), Law of Desire (1987), Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990).

Pedro Almodóvar told newspaper El País that this was one of the toughest projects of his career. He described the film as: “Close to a horror like never before, pushing the boundaries of the genre, with no screaming or terror.”

E. B.

The film is to be screened at 8.30 a.m., 2.30 p.m. and 7.30 p.m. in the Grand Théâtre Lumière