£6.00
(£4.50 conc.)
Doors 2:00pm
Film 2:30pm
English subtitles
A film and book club for avid readers and Deptford cinephiles. Every second Sunday afternoon of the month, we will meet up to watch a film adaptation of a book or a writer’s biopic. After the screening, there will be an informal chat about the book and the film, upstairs in the bar. There will be cake!
dir. Pedro Almodóvar
year. 2011
country. Spain
run-time. 117min
starring: Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya
rating. 15
THE SKIN I LIVE IN (2011)
based on the novel
TARANTULA by Thierry Jonquet
a film Directed by Pedro Almodóvar
This is a film of twisted charisma, knotted plots and perfect indestructible skin. Imprisoned in a stylish apartment, Vera languishes in luxury, watching nature programmes on TV, practising yoga and making clay models. She has everything that she needs apart from her freedom and believes that her only escape is either through seduction of her captor or suicide.
Banderas plays the brilliant plastic surgeon holding Vera (Elena Anaya) captive as part of his diabolical experiment to create a skin that is impervious to fire. The mad scientist, the body parts, the private operating theatre; all very pulp horror. But the real horror lies in Banderas drive to mould a surface likeness, which pays more than a passing homage to Vertigo.
The Skin I Live In is freely adapted from Tarantula by Thierry Jonquet. The novel itself is described by The Washington Post as an “unholy collaboration between Sade and Sartre, with occasional comic interventions by that honorary Frenchman Jerry Lewis.” Only a director such as Almodóvar could bring together the dark sexual obsession, surgical spectacle, and bizarre narrative twists with such cinematic assurance and virtuosity.
You are welcome to come along to the screening even if you haven’t read the book. The screening will be followed by an informal discussion about the themes of the film.
“A truly macabre suspense thriller and a nightmare melodrama clotted and tangled with bizarre backstory; it’s a body horror comedy of the kind that only Almodóvar would know how, or indeed wish, to create.”
“An Almodóvar movie with all the attendant gifts that implies: lapidary technique, calculated perversity, intelligent wit. ”
