The Skin I Live In (Spain, 2011)
Directed by Pedro Almodovar
Starring Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Marisa Paredes, Jan Cornet

I first saw the trailer for Pedro Almodovar's The Skin I Live In at the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle, while waiting patiently for Sarah's Key to start. The trailer was immensely creepy, and my immediate reaction was the exclamation: "Blimey! He's turned into Georges Franju!". It was through such a reaction that I was compelled to return the following week, to catch one of the most intriguing films of the year.If Black Swan was Darren Aronofsky's version of Suspiria, The Skin I Live In is Pedro Almodovar's take on Georges Franju's horror classic Eyes Without A Face. He takes the premise, plot and iconic imagery of what is still one of the scariest horror movies ever made, throws in his trademark blend of melodrama, gender politics and soap opera, and then cranks everything up to eleven. The result, like Black Swan, is frequently ridiculous, but also strange, engrossing and intensely memorable.Although precious little of his career has been based in or concerned with horror, Almodovar knows the genre well enough to pay knowing tribute to several iconic entries in the canon. The references to Eyes Without A Face are clear both in the film and in its publicity, especially in the white face mask which our heroine wears for most of the film. The plot loosely follows the same arc, although instead of stealing other people's faces, the obsessive mad scientist irrevocably alters a criminal's identity and gender as payback for what happened to his wife and daughter.Antonio Banderas' character looks back to the cinematic tradition of mad scientists, beginning of course with Rotwang from Metropolis. But his closest equivalent is Vincent Price in The Abominable Dr. Phibes, a campy, schlocky B-movie in which Price plays a zombie scientist who recreates the Biblical plagues of Egypt to avenge the death of his wife. Finally the surgical sequences, which are particularly graphic, recall the famous eye-slice sequence in Un Chien Andalou, whose surrealist sensibility mirrors Almodovar's interest in the supernatural.Mark Kermode remarked that one unique aspect of cinema is its ability to make acts of painstaking construction inherently seductive. In other words, watching someone assembling a gun or performing an operation on screen has an engrossing quality, so that we are drawn in even knowing that what we are seeing is, on one level, totally repulsive. If the surgical scenes in The Skin I Live In are anything to go by, Kermode was right on the money. There is something inherently sinister about surgical equipment on screen, but even as we recoil at what may (or may not) be happening, Almodovar's camera is coaxing us to lean in for a closer look.The Skin I Live In has a number of deeply uncomfortable scenes which in the hands of a lesser filmmaker would cause the whole project to collapse. The scenes of Vicente being hosed down and kept prisoner in the cellar are very close to the aesthetic of so-called torture porn. But even in its most tortuous moments the film never tips over into the territory of Captivity, i.e. condoning or encouraging any sadism on our part.A similar issue could be taken with the amount of nudity in the film, and particularly with the way in which it is presented. In one lengthy scene, Robert Ledgard (Banderas) begins to cover 'Vera' in the new skin which he has been cultivating. We see Vera's exposed breasts and genitalia in close up over a long take, while Robert guides the new material over her body with tweezers. As before, it's uncomfortable, but Almodovar holds his nerve and prevents the scene from becoming gratuitous through very careful editing.Like all the best horror films, The Skin I Live In is not gruesome or graphic for its own sake. It's very rare to get a horror film about gender politics, let alone one whose approach is so nuanced and intelligent. Where previous efforts like Teeth eventually abandoned or distorted their feminist credentials, this film puts its audience through the mill if it has t, in order to keep its sense of conviction.The film explores the notion of gender identity, and to what extent one's gender is defined by one's physical appearance. When Robert captures Vicente, wanting revenge for the rape of his daughter, the easy thing to do would be to castrate him, in the manner of Hard Candy or Teeth. Instead, Robert's retribution is more twisted, giving Vicente a vagina so that he has to experience some degree of womanhood for the rest of his life.After his daughter's death, brought on by a Repulsion-like fear of men, Robert takes his guinea pig a little further. What started as an act of retribution steadily transmutes into something a great deal more twisted, as Vicente is shaped into a near-perfect copy of Robert's wife, who is isolated from the outside world and used by Robert for sexual pleasure. In these scenes Robert truly emerges as a monster, who has forsaken the life-saving benefits of his research to satisfy his urges and atone for his mistakes.The film's exploration of gender identity is concentrated in the behaviour of 'Vera'. For most of the film we believe convincingly that she is wholly a woman - even before the massive twist, we don't have any reason to doubt that she identifies as such. Once we know what has been done to 'her', we come to believe that one's identity is indeed determined by physical factors. But as with Eyes Without A Face, the final rebellion turns all of this on its head, with 'Vera' revealing what or who she truly is in the gripping final scene.Like most of Almodovar's work, The Skin I Live In combines this twisted and sinister storyline with laugh-out-loud, awkward humour. The jokes frequently come at the expense of the characters involved, particularly 'Vera'. In one scene, Robert brings out a box of dildos of increasing size, and lays them out on the table while instructing his most prized possession about how and when to use each one. The camera then cuts to the line of dildos, with Vera looking startled behind her mask in the background.The Skin I Live In is at heart a melodrama: it has a relatively simple story (albeit one with a cracker of a twist), which relies on the memorability of the characters to give the story depth and credibility. Almodovar's characterisation is complex but very overt, and the manner in which he introduces characters tells us pretty much all we need to know. When we first meet Antonio Banderas, he is giving a lecture in which the lights cast deep shadows under his eyes: before he has even said a word, we know he is up to no good.Because The Skin I Live In is so deeply rooted in melodrama, it does require a lot of patience both to buy into the various twists and to put up with the more histrionic sections of the plot. Flashing back to events six years prior to the beginning works very well, but if you find yourself getting incredulous over the central plot device, you'll struggle to put up with the man dressed as a tiger. As with Black Swan, there is a sense of the ridiculous in all of this, but as long as we are in the zone with the characters, that sense should not override our enjoyment.The Skin I Live In is one of the most intriguing and engrossing films of 2011. It is a little too long, and we do have to hold our nerve in the more ridiculous moments. But with enough patience the substance and chills of Almodovar come surging through. Antonio Banderas gives his best performance in quite some time, and Elena Anaya is a great match, having previously shone in the underrated Savage Grace. It's a twisted, creepy and tantalising work, which in its finest moments gives Black Swan a run for its money.

Rating:
Verdict: The Spanish Black Swan

Angel Heart (USA, 1987)
Directed by Alan Parker
Starring Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, Lisa Bonet, Charlotte Rampling

Alan Parker is that most contradictory of characters, the journeyman auteur. In a career spanning four decades he has made a film in almost every conceivable genre, from musicals (Bugsy Malone) to prison dramas (Midnight Express), and from war films (Birdy) to offbeat comedies (The Road to Wellville). While the results have not always been cohesive or agreeable, when he is on form he achieves that rare balance of distinctive directorial vision and respectful treatment of a given story.After working with Peter Gabriel on Birdy, the film which launched the career of Matthew Modine, Parker turned his hand to film noir in the form of Angel Heart. Based loosely on the novel Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg, it combines the hardboiled pulp fiction of Raymond Chandler with the supernatural threat of The Wicker Man, held together by Parker's sumptuous visuals and a powerful central performance by Mickey Rourke. While not a complete masterpiece, it remains a highly compelling work of 1980s cinema which is more than worthy of its cult status.On a basic level, Angel Heart is a throwback to the classic noirs of the 1930s and 1940s, with a plot straight out of a classic gumshoe detective story. In the film a private detective meets a mysterious client, who offers him a large sum of money to find a man who owes him some form of debt. As the detective snoops around, he finds himself pulled further and further into a dark new world, and eventually comes to realise that he is more closely connected to the client than he previously thought...When written out like this, Angel Heart can seem incredibly hackneyed, the sort of script which had been hanging around studios for years being constantly re-written. But the film is fully aware of its place in the genre, tipping its hat to other recent attempts to reinvigorate or redefine film noir. There is, for instance, a direct nod to Chinatown in the scene on the beach: Harry Angel is given a nose shield which he clips to his sunglasses, mirroring the image of J. J. Gittes with his bandaged nose.Both Chinatown and Angel Heart use the conventions of pulp and film noir to provide a firm grounding for their audience, giving some form of reassurance as they indulge in ideas or flights of fantasy which are uncommon for their genre. In the end Angel Heart is the weaker film, since its relationship to such conventions is so close that, on a narrative level at least, it never manages to rise above it. But there is still much pleasure to be had from watching all the pieces fit together, and much terror to be found in Parker's various stylish indulgences.Judged purely on its visuals, Angel Heart is as memorably full-on and sumptuous as Pink Floyd - The Wall five years earlier. As with that film, there is a contrast between the pale and faded colours of the 'normal' world (in this case New York City) and the richer, fuller tones which gradually emerge as both film and character tip over into madness. Parker's long-time cinematographer, Michael Seresin, floods these sequences with reds and blacks which wouldn't look out of place in the work of Dario Argento, and his capturing of shadows rivals anything on The Third Man.These visuals hint at one of the great successes of Angel Heart as a thriller, namely the level of atmosphere it creates. The three or four scenes involving Robert De Niro are uncharacteristically quiet; they occur in churches, offices and deserted cafés, places in which Parker can play on the pauses and grant De Niro's every word the emphasis it deserves. This, coupled with his threatening characterisation, creates the sense of some great evil hovering over everything that occurs between his meetings with Mickey Rourke. Like the dark shadows on a Francis Bacon painting, we feel threatened by this intangible, amorphous sense of doom, which feeds the paranoia of the audience until we are begging for relief.The plot of Angel Heart is rooted in the age-old story of Faustus, which involves a man selling his soul to the devil in return for success - he gains the world at the cost of the one thing that is truly and inalienably his. The character of Johnny Favourite, who never appears on screen, stands in for Faust as a man determined to have fame and fortune at any price. But where Faust seeks no harm to others in his quest for hedonistic fulfilment, Favourite is "as close to true evil as anyone wanted to come" and is driven to desperation in his bid to renege on the deal.The film is full of religious imagery relating to both Christianity and voodoo. Some of the Christian imagery is obvious: you don't call characters Harry Angel and Louis Cyphre without good reason. In one of their conversations, Cyphre describes how an egg can represent the human soul; he then proceeds to devour an egg he had peeled with his long fingernails, like the devil wearing down a victim and going in for the kill. Other images are more subtle and inventive, like the recurring shot of fans and elevators - ordinary, everyday objects which carry connotations of death and descent into darkness.

As with the paganism depicted in The Wicker Man, the voodoo elements in Angel Heart are not intended necessarily to be taken as chapter and verse. The intention is less to describe exactly what voodoo entails and how it is practised, and more about conveying a clash of cultures, in this case between atheism and the supernatural in general. Angel's contact with voodoo in New Orleans is the first time he entertains the idea that Johnny Favourite was anything more than an elaborate hoax. In a subversion of Christianity, it is faith in a life after death that leads him not to God but to the Devil.Being both a hardboiled thriller and a supernatural horror movie, Angel Heart contains a certain amount of graphic violence. Such scenes include a live chicken being cut open and its blood being poured over Lisa Bonet, Angel being beaten up by anonymous mobsters, and the numerous murders which occur. Though not an out-and-out shocker in the mould of Hellraiser, there is more than enough in Angel Heart to make you wince and shiver.Fortunately, precious little of this violence is salacious or gratuitous. The most terrifying moments in Angel Heart are those which use such imagery in an artier, more abstract way to unnerve the viewer psychologically. As the film goes on, Angel begins to suffer vivid nightmares involving an apartment window, red light and a man screaming - a simple image which becomes steadily more unsettling. There is a further link with Pink Floyd - The Wall in the scene where Angel and Epiphany make love in the leaky apartment. The image of water slowly turning to blood is a close cousin of 'The Thin Ice' sequence with Bob Geldof drowning in the swimming pool.The performances in Angel Heart are every bit as memorable as the imagery surrounding them. Although De Niro hovers menacingly over everything, it is Mickey Rourke who defines the film in what remains his finest performance. Harry Angel may be a dishevelled flatfoot, but Rourke brings so much more to the party, from his snarky facial expressions to a deep world-weariness: whether down-to-earth or downright hysterical, Angel feels so much more than just an archetype. The supporting performances by Lisa Bonet and Charlotte Rampling are also pretty convincing, especially from the former in a full-on big-screen debut.Angel Heart does for the pulp thriller what Black Swan did for the giallos of Dario Argento. It takes a number of familiar elements from a given genre and affectionately cranks them up to a point of near-hysteria, resulting in a film which is intensely atmospheric and deeply unnerving. Like Black Swan, there are moments which are ridiculous, and it's hardly the most consistent film ever made. But when it works, it works beautifully, resulting in a breath-taking balance of art, faith and fear.

Rating:
Verdict: Sumptuous, stylish, strange and scary

Black Swan (USA, 2011)
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Starring Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey

What is it about ballet and madness that continues to entrance filmmakers? In the 1940s we had The Red Shoes, Powell and Pressburger's masterful look at art, love, jealousy and fantasy set against the backdrop of a ballet company. In the 1970s we had Suspiria, Dario Argento's brutal masterpiece about the fate of a young ballerina modelled on Snow White. And now we have Black Swan from Darren Aronofsky, one of the maddest and most unrelenting films you will see all year.Aronofsky has always been an uncompromising director, having put his audiences through the mill with Requiem for a Dream and tested their patience with The Fountain (think Terrence Malick in space, only not as good). Black Swan continues this trend, beginning at a point of nerve-shredding intensity and never letting you relax until our heroine lies bleeding at the end. In the hands of a less confident director, the film's shrieking intensity and over-cranked visual style would have made the finished project nothing short of ridiculous. But for all the elements which don't quite work, it somehow holds together, for good or bad, as something genuinely jaw-dropping.As so often happens, the release of Black Swan has prompted a discussion about the nature of its subject matter, specifically over how realistic is its depiction of ballet, both physically and psychologically. On the first point, the film is one of the best in recent memory at putting dancing up on screen. Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis went through six months of intense training for the roles, so that they physical resemble ballerinas as well as being able to do most of their own dancing. Aronofsky does not rely overly on editing to show the best possible version of a given routine, giving us a sense of scale which Rob Marshall's works do not.Ultimately, however, to focus on whether or not Black Swan accurately depicts the world of ballet is to somewhat miss the point. The film is much more of a study of a character in disintegration, about the physical and emotional consequences that come from devotion to one's art, and how such devotion can quickly tip over into obsession and delusion. The film's status as a full-on visual experience is mitigated only by the deep emotional attachment we have for the central character, who appears in every frame and is the only thing we have approaching a reliable narrator.

In both its subject matter and execution, Black Swan is a deeply cine-literate film which references a whole host of other works. It is at heart a genre piece, combining elements of psychological and expressionist horror with the character study elements of an introspective thriller. This does not denigrate or compromise the boldness of Aronofsky's vision, but it is worth being aware of these references as a means of explaining and responding to the film.The film owes a large debt to the works of Powell and Pressburger, particularly The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus. Like the former, it is not so much a film about ballet as a film about personal trauma which just happens to have ballet in it. It is every bit as melodramatic (in the best possible way) and similar themes are explored, such as the jealousy of the various dancers and the way in which the pursuit of perfection leads to hallucination or fantasy.

Both films are striking in their use of colour, from the strobe-red lighting in the nightclub to the beaming white stage lamps during the actual performance. But where Powell goes for wide-eyed, almost childlike fantasy, Aronofsky is much more lurid in approach, playing up the sexual currents in the story rather more. After a fundraising evening, Vincent Cassel tells Natalie Portman to lighten up by going home and touching herself, and earlier on he dismisses her attempts at dancing the Black Swan as un-seductive, adding that her male colleagues wouldn't look at her twice.Stripped of all its trappings, Black Swan is a relatively simple story about the conflict between light and darkness and the need to be in touch with the latter. Nina's physical conflict is plain to see; aside from all the shots of her skeletal body, the film devotes many painful frames to splitting toenails, cracking feet and disguising the strange rashes on her shoulder blades. But like Black Narcissus, Aronofsky's main means of expressing the difference between dark and light is through an exploration of sexuality.The relationship between Nina and Lily is to a large extent a restaging of the clash in Black Narcissus between Sisters Clodagh and Ruth. In their confrontation towards the end of the film, these two are offered up to us as two opposing sides of womanhood, with the latter being driven almost to madness by her overt sexualisation and the former being stymied by her desire for purity. Nina's purity is not only physical (she is a virgin) but technical, which in the end prevents her from being a great dancer as opposed to a very good one. Lily meanwhile has all the wild spirit and seduction needed to be great, but she turns up late, picks up strangers and parties all night long.While this dichotomy works well, it is ironically in its most lurid aspects that the film begins to come apart. Even if we accept the hysterical tone of the film, certain moments still feel out of place or overdone. The scene of the dirty old man eyeing up Nina on the train is very uncomfortable and far too literal-minded in a film which is trying to be symbolic. And then there is the hallucinatory lesbian sex between Nina and Lily, which represents the same act of symbolic self-love of Betty and Rita in Mulholland Drive. But whereas in David Lynch's film that scene felt relatively substantial, in Black Swan it doesn't feel quite so essential, and its ability to titillate certain audience members threatens to drag the whole story into route-one exploitation.Fortunately, the film redeems itself by not letting these wobbles undercut the general narrative. It drifts between fantasy and reality so seamlessly that the barriers between them eventually crumble, so that by the last 20 minutes, you no longer have the luxury of knowing what is real and what is not. This forces you to trust Nina, so that whatever happens on screen becomes reality in that moment and cannot be solidly questioned. No other film could string together the body-horror metamorphosis of David Cronenberg's The Fly and the blood-drenched giallo of Suspiria, two traditions which on paper are miles apart.This portion of Black Swan highlights the biggest debt of the film, which is to the work of Dario Argento; Mark Kermode famously described the ending of Black Swan as "Dario Argento on crack". Suspiria runs throughout these scenes, with the bitchy chorus line standing in for the coven of witches plotting our heroine's downfall, and Lily's alternate taking the place of the mother witch whom she must defeat. The colour palette is stretched to the outer limits, with the blood and Black Narcissus eyes being the same Day Glo red as the blood as Argento's work. For all the well-executed mirror tricks and CGI doppelgangers, this is the moment in which the film fully takes flight.Black Swan is an utterly mad film which manages somehow to hang together in the face of many striking and rivalling elements. Its closest comparison from a structural viewpoint is The Man Who Fell to Earth: many scenes are indulgent, or uncomfortable, or downright unnecessary, but the overall effect is quite profound. Natalie Portman gives her best performance in a decade, banishing the memories of the Star Wars prequels and hinting at a possible new maturity in her line of work. It's not perfect, or entirely satisfying, but it remains a truly frightening experience.

Rating: 4/5
Verdict: Breathtakingly bonkers