This is one fucked up movie. It starts off as perhaps a medical thriller or maybe a sci-fi thriller, you are not really sure which way it's going to go. The answer is that it doesn't go either way. It's a story about what lengths people will go to for love and revenge.
So, Marillo has two sons, Vaca and Roberto. She works as a maid, and Vaca is fathered by another member of the household staff. He is too much for her to deal with so is put into foster care or adopted and then into foster care. She then has Roberto, fathered by her employer who's wife if barren so that they can claim Roberto is their baby. Marillo is the boys nanny and caretaker.
Roberto grows up to become a famous and talented plastic surgeon who marries the girl of his dreams. Vaca, on the run from the law, comes to his mother to be hidden, neither he nor Roberto knowing that they are brothers. Vaca and Roberto's wife start a lurid affair and decide to run away together, leaving Roberto and their daughter Norma behind.
Vaca and the wife get in a horrible, fiery automobile accident. Vaca runs away leaving the woman to die, but Roberto finds he jsut in a knick of time. She is horribly burned, but through his mad skill as a surgeon saves her life. Because she is horribly scared, he removes all mirrors from her room and keeps it dimly lit with heavy shades. One day upon hearing the singing of her daughter, the daughter that doesn't know she's been horribly burned, the woman pulls open the blinds to see what the sound is. Upon seeing her reflection for the first time and just how hideous she looks, she throws herself out her window to her death, literally right in front of Norma.
Norma has a psychotic break and goes to live at a psychiatric facility. After many years of therapy there, she is finally learning to interact socially with people her own age, that is to say people in their early 20s. The doctor hosts a party with young people from the facility as well as from the town. Roberto is at this party to see how his daughter is coping. But, a young man, high on pills, is also at this party and his name is Vicente.
Vicente and Norma hit off over looks across the room and go for a walk together that culminates in him raping her, and when she starts screaming, he knocks her unconscious. But Roberto has already gone looking for her and sees Vicente fleeing. Unfortunately for Roberto, who is with his daughter when she awakes, Norma has had another psychotic break and now identifies him with the rapist.
After a time back at the hospital, Norma throws herself from a window, dying as her mother had.
Roberto, hell bent on revenge, kidnaps Vicente and holds him prisoner for a while. After what seems to be a couple of weeks, Roberto figures out his revenge. Against Vicente's will, Roberto performs a complete sex change operation. Roberto also begins to experiment on Vicente, now renamed Vera, with an artificial skin made from human cells with a pig's dna or nucleus or something. This goes for a little over four years until the head of the scientific academy finds out about the forbidden use of pig genetic material and demands that Roberto stop his experiments, to which Roberto agrees.
Vera has half-heartedly tried to kill herself over the years, but Roberto always patches her back up. Now, Marillo councils her son who doesn't know he's her son to kill Vera and dispose of the body so that nobody can find it.
Vaca re-enters the scene, again needing hid from the law. His mother does not want to help him, but allows him in the house. He eventually ties her up and goes looking for Vera whom he has seen on a video display. Vaca remarks that her face looks just like Roberto's dead wife, his dead lover. When Vaca does find Vera, he takes her into her room and forcibly rapes her.
Roberto comes home while this is happening, takes the gun his mother had but couldn't use on Vaca and goes upstairs to Vera's room, where Vaca is still raping her. Roberto aims the gun first at Vera's head, thinking of Marillo's command to kill her now. After a moment of reflection, he then shoots Vaca twice, killing him.
Instead of killing her, Roberto frees Vera and they briefly become lovers until she gains his trust and freedom of the house long enough to get the gun which she uses to kill Roberto and Marillo before returning home to her mother.
Pretty straight-forward, right? Except I told you the story chronologically, not the order which it takes place in the film. But, hey, at least I've ruined the surprises for you.
The film is worth watching for the sake of seeing Antonio Banderas in action in a role that is not your typical leading man role. But, also be warned that this movie is pretty graphic in it's portrayal of violence towards women.
The Skin I Live In at IMDb
No comments:
Post a Comment