Exactly the kind of film Hitchcock would be making if he were alive today.
Antonio Banderas plays a brilliant plastic surgeon who has created a synthetic skin that can withstand any kind of damage but retains all of the same sensitivities as normal skin.
Elena Anaya (who you might recognise as the evil, half-faced villain from Wonder Woman) is the mysterious and volatile guinea pig he is trying the new skin out on.
She is held prisoner by him, and while he has some affection for her, she is also somehow linked to a secretive tragedy in his past.
That is the set-up for The Skin I Live In, released in 2011, and still one of the best, most twisted, but seldom-talked-about thrillers of recent years.
To say too much more than that would kind of give too much of the game away, and while we recommend you just watch the movie without too much more info, here is the trailer if you REALLY need to see it...
Clip via Movieclips Trailers
And you don't have to just take our word for it:
"There are several genres nimbly folded into The Skin I Live In, which might also be described as an existential mystery, a melodramatic thriller, a medical horror film or just a polymorphous extravaganza. In other words, it's an Almodóvar movie with all the attendant gifts that implies: lapidary technique, calculated perversity, intelligent wit." - The New York Times
"Ultimately an original film that forces us, time and again, to reconsider what we think we've just seen, and what we're sure we feel - not only about mere appearance, or fateful gender, but about who, under our skin, we truly are." - Wall Street Journal
"By the end of the movie, when all your questions have been answered, you're left with the exhilarating high of having been manipulated by a gifted artist in a diabolically dark mood." - Miami Herald
"The Skin I Live in is Almodóvar reaching back to his sickest, kinkiest self, and it's nice to see him trying to luxuriate in sleaze again." - Boston Globe
The Skin I Live In is on Saturday night (going into Sunday morning) on BBC Two at 12.20am.
