Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
A brilliant plastic surgeon creates a synthetic skin that withstands any kind of damage. His guinea pig: a mysterious and volatile woman who holds the key to his obsession.
Almodóvar's psychosexual thriller is a singular, deeply unsettling work — one of his most daring. The nonlinear revelation of identity and the face-transplant revenge narrative is extraordinarily constructed, blending body horror with melodrama in a way no other filmmaker could. Banderas and Anaya deliver career-defining performances, and Almodóvar's visual compositions are sumptuous and clinical in equal measure — perfectly serving the film's themes of control and transformation. Novelty is sky-high: this is an utterly one-of-a-kind film in conception and tone. The ending, while emotionally resonant and thematically coherent, slightly deflates after the extraordinary mid-film revelations, feeling somewhat abrupt rather than fully earned as a payoff to the baroque complexity preceding it.