The Skin I Live In
By Moira Sullivan *SPOILERS* Vera Cruz: Larger than Life The Skin I Live In is Pedro Almodóvar’s latest freaky venture into dressing and undressing women. This time his cross dressing fetish involves Male to Female gender reassignment –forced reassignment as punishment for the attempted rape and later suicide of a surgeon's daughter. There is much to be admired in the art direction of this film - in a sinister way: the Petri dishes that grow skin from fresh animal blood, the surgical gowns and dressings, and other accouterments of the operating room, and another room - a room where a young woman is kept prisoner who can not look out but is gazed upon - who uses mascara to create a living diary with tiny writing and small images, and fashions Louise Bourgeois creations of tattered torn up doll carcasses. The glass wall that separates surgeon from patient is enlarged like a wide screen cinema. A remote camera is projected into the kitchen where the surgeo...