Cory's Reads #6: Pedro Almodovar's The Skin I Live In and Crossing The Cultural Divide
As my life's next chapter nears, Almodovar's 2011 erotic thriller has reshaped my vision of the future, and reminded me that I love my girlfriend. A lot.
Rejection hurts.
I wrote the following essay for a popular film site, in hopes of being published in their latest issue. I knew it was a long shot, but I was proud of this piece dammit!
Nevertheless, rejection came. And that’s OK. Because now I get to share this piece with you all. What follows is one of the most vulnerable things I have ever written, about one of the greatest people I have ever known.
Enjoy.
Siempre y para siempre.
We say it to each other every night. She, with her natural Spanish accent. I, with my belabored, anglicized inflection.
Siempre y para siempre. It means “always and forever.” We say it to each other every night. We promise it to each other every night. But even as we double, triple, quadruple down on our commitment to one another, my girlfriend and I remain of two distant worlds.
We met as college students in Pittsburgh, PA, where she and her family have lived for the past decade. Prior to that, Gabriela spent time in Liberty Park, AL and — briefly — London, UK. But she spent most of her youth in Spain, just outside of Madrid. Her father is a Spaniard. Most of her extended family remains in Madrid and the surrounding area. She travels to the country every summer, vacationing on las playas of Mallorca, getting drunk on la sidra of Asturias.
I, on the other hand, grew up in a Philly suburb. I’ve been here my whole life. I’ve never been to Spain, although I hope to soon. In lieu of traveling to my girlfriend’s second home, I’ve watched Pedro Almodovar movies. With most of Almodovar’s filmography under my belt, Spain has crystallized right before my eyes as a vibrant nation, embellished with glossy colors, melodramatic moments, and sex. Lots and lots of sex.
Almodovar and his projects of passionate promiscuity were new to Gabby, her family far removed from La Movida Madrileña that helped usher Almodovar and his sense of sexual freedom into the spotlight in the early 1980’s. The director may be among Spain’s most internationally successful filmmakers, but his status within his home country remains a tad more complicated. Nevertheless, Gabby welcomed Almodovar’s work with open arms. As she and I experienced film after film from the kitschy Calzada de Calatrava native, we were both introduced to a new Spain, one defined by its outspoken female heroines, its rebellious attitudes towards religion, and its sexually perverted underground.
Almodovar’s films put forth a rather exciting, albeit narrow, conception of his native country. In watching an Almodovar film, Spain becomes either one of the most progressive places on the planet, or a quirkily exotic foreign land. Both designations present plenty of potential, but also plenty of danger, for Spain and its people. But Almodovar’s films remain intensely personal works, and should be evaluated as such. And no film is more transgressive in its exploration of both the man and his country than 2011’s The Skin I Live In, the most recent entry to be checked off my and Gabby’s Almodovar watchlist. The film fittingly crawls beneath your skin, and is ripe with philosophical insight on gender, sexuality, and romance. But what the film deals with more broadly is identity. The lack of one. The creation of one. The transformation or redefinition of one. The Skin I Live In presents an existential nightmare for Vicente (Jan Cornet) when Dr. Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas) turns him into a woman, Vera Cruz (Elena Anaya). Vicente’s identity crisis extends to the viewer as well, confronting us with all the things that either do or do not define us. It’s an unsettling experience, and one might imagine how the film’s exploitation of gender dysphoria would be received by the LGBTQIA+ community. Almodovar’s subversions have certainly bumped up against various extremes in the past, but with The Skin I Live In, the director ignores such boundaries entirely. The merits of such ambition are certainly up for debate, but Almodovar approaches the material with a sort of clinical restraint, rather discordant with the more stylized approach that has come to define the director over the years. In so coldly embracing the least sexy of erotic thrillers, Almodovar is preemptively acknowledging — yet by no means apologizing for — any collateral offense.
There is another byproduct of Almodovar’s uncharacteristically muted direction, however. No longer directing lovingly complex odes to his mother or darkly comic tales from Madrid (The Skin I Live In is the rare Almodovar film to take place outside of the Spanish capital, opting instead for nearby Toledo), Almodovar is inviting his audience to look inward, to consider the skin we live in.
And so as Gabby and I watched The Skin I Live In and sank deeper into Almodovar’s Spain, into ourselves, my skin began to tingle. At once unnerving and reaffirming, the sensation forced me into direct confrontation with all that makes up my identity, Gabby’s identity, and our relationship’s identity.
I thought I knew myself. I thought I knew her. I thought I understood all the things that make Gabby Spanish, all the things that make her, her. Any lingering cultural or linguistic gaps in our relationship were trivial; I’d visit Spain soon enough, and Duolingo has been a vital friend throughout our relationship. But The Skin I Live In drew attention to an unspoken tension in my relationship with Gabby, one that — if left untouched — could render siempre y para siempre nothing but an empty platitude.
What does our future hold? More specifically, where is our future? We are far from the first couple to ask ourselves these difficult questions, but they have taken on particular pressure as of late. I am set to live in the United Kingdom next year as I pursue my Master’s. Gabby too will be in Europe, studying at the University of Amsterdam. Europe, she says, is where she feels most at home. Spain, she hopes, is where she will one day settle down. Her family hopes to return to España as well. Am I ready to do the same? Does siempre y para siempre also imply en cualquier lugar y en todas partes? I am far from the patriotic type, but the United States of America is the only home I have ever known. Indeed, I have envisioned myself in just about every continent at one point or another, but confronted with a possible life as an expat, it all seems just a tad overwhelming. Of course, my anxiety is rooted in conjecture, Gabby’s too. They are also rooted in ego. Nothing is wrong with that, of course. We all have egos. We all even become those egos from time to time. But identifying with our egos is where conflict — both internal and external — arises.
Physically stripped of all the things that feed his ego, The Skin I Live In’s Vicente can no longer access such identification. The immediate result is absolute dissolution of his sense of self, eventually culminating in a new, albeit fleeting, identification with Vera, the woman he becomes at the hands of Dr. Ledgard. As Vicente comes to terms with who he is, ego evaporates. Dr. Ledgard’s cruel exploitation of Vicente — motivated by Vicente’s drunken assault on Ledgard’s daughter Norma — is much more than a manipulation of the man’s body; it is an assault on the man’s ego. Vicente nearly descends into madness over the course of his transformation into Vera. The death of Vicente’s ego seems to be the death of Vicente, but the self is resilient. Even as Vicente’s physical identity is disintegrated, diminished, displaced, an internal “Vicente” remains. He may go so far as to submit to Ledgard’s sexual advances — Ledgard modeled his creation after his late wife Gal — but does so with an awareness that the physical (Vera) and the spiritual (Vicente) remain separate entities.
The very act of discussing The Skin I Live In can be treacherous in that referring to Vicente/Vera by either name is a seemingly political decision, with implications for several real-life individuals. But the distinction between these two identities is perhaps best understood as a metaphysical one, concerned not with what name Vicente/Vera will one day write on paperwork, but with what identity breathes meaning and purpose back into his life. I refer to Vicente as such because that seems to be the identity he prefers, no matter how deeply he merges with the manufactured Vera. His external expression is that of a woman, but his internal sense remains that of a man. This tension is what makes Almodovar’s film so bizarrely erotic. Vera is an incredibly beautiful woman. Actress Elena Anaya, who previously appeared in Almodovar’s 2003 film Talk to Her, plays both Vera and Gal. Only by watching the film alongside my very own Spaniard did I learn that Anaya is among the most popular actresses in Spain, a traditional starlet whose beauty is often leveraged in conjunction with her roles. Even Hollywood played off of Anaya’s allure with Patty Jenkins’ 2017 film Wonder Woman, in which Anaya played the villainous Dr. Poison, who covers her face in prosthetics to conceal self-inflicted facial scars. But before Jenkins ever considered obscuring the Spanish star’s good looks, Almodovar did the same, withholding Anaya’s face and figure from us as a sort of erotic tease. Anaya spends much of The Skin I Live In wrapped in a prosthetic helmet, indicating a time when she is not quite Vicente — Jan Cornet is a lesser-known yet still popular performer in Spain, Gabby says — and not quite Vera. Wrapped in prosthetics, gauze, and a shapeless bodysuit, the character is stranded between any possible identities. It is almost as if they are barely human at all. Almodovar establishes Spanish heartthrobs Anaya and Cornet as the two poles of a blank slate, as two objects of desire, yet neither are available to us as viewers, nor Vicente as a man hopelessly in search of himself.
This space between Vera and Vicente is where The Skin I Live In becomes the most terrifying film in Almodovar’s oeuvre. Projected upon the viewer, this area embodies the aforementioned existential nightmare of The Skin I Live In. The question pitched to the audience is no longer “what if you were no longer yourself?” but rather “what if you were no one at all?” It’s an unsettling proposition, made worse by the looming presence of sex in the film. Indeed, The Skin I Live In can be understood as two hours of pure cinematic penetration. Nothing demands awareness, presence, a commitment to the now, like sexual intercourse. To drift into the past or the future is to barely have sex at all, but such drifting might be too tempting for a victim like Vicente, who is not just a man in a woman’s body, but a captive in Ledgard’s home, a plaything with which the doctor may pleasure himself as he sees fit. This dynamic is made visually apparent as Vicente — compressed inside a black bodysuit — begins to resemble the dolls he sees on TV. There suddenly comes a great deal of power from this space in between male and female form for Vicente. To submit to his transformation wholeheartedly is to submit to his captor’s sexual perversions as well. To resist Ledgard’s experimentation is to welcome only further torture. But to look inward, to remain in that space where you are nothing but your own awareness, is to achieve a rather profound revelation regarding our egos and what truly constitutes our being. This space is what Almodovar is referring to when he introduces us to an unnamed yoga instructor, who explains that “there is a place where you can take refuge, a place inside you, a place to which no one else has access, a place that no one can destroy.” In reaching such a place, the instructor promises paz, tranquilidad, y libertad.
And so this space, in all its emptiness and uncertainty, is where I find myself today. I am caught between the life I had always imagined for myself, and the life I want to live with my beloved Gabby, who is lost in this space right alongside me. To put it practically, I am torn between the United States and Europe — Brad Pitt and Penelope Cruz, if you will. But stranded in this sea, several simple truths rise to the surface.
Respiro. Se que respiro, Vicente scrawls repeatedly across the walls of his empty white room. I breathe. I know I breathe. It doesn’t get much more essential than that. Vicente’s breath becomes the only thing tethering him to his sense of self, and his humanity at large. Of course, other written messages highlight his continued struggles as well. The opium helps me forget, one reads. Vicente occasionally smokes opium with Dr. Ledgard, one of the few ways in which her captor is willing to appease her. Of course, Vicente is not all that interested in forgetting. Neither am I. More importantly, neither is Gabby. Having spent over a decade in the United States, she refuses to forget the country that shaped her into the woman she is today, the same country that her father speaks about with such pride, the same country that Almodovar has repeatedly challenged and revolutionized through the power of cinema. I admire the passion with which Gabby and her family discuss Spanish cuisine, feeding me an endless onslaught of gulas and mejillones. Even as Gabby’s life in Spain shifts further and further into the past, her Spanish identity persists. She remains in that same place Vicente finds himself, a place which no one can destroy. Her love for Spain, and Europe more broadly, is infectious. I am hard-pressed not to desire a visit to that place — both figurative and literal. Whereas my girlfriend has etched into the walls of her surroundings some of her life’s certainties, I continue to confuse what matters most.
What am I?
I am a writer. A cinephile. A son. A boyfriend. An American. These are the simple truths of my life, and, like Gabby, these I must return to even as I feel them slipping further into my past. Indeed, that is largely the impetus for writing the most personal piece I have ever written.
Vicente writes one other vital reminder on the walls of his white room. It’s the largest message he includes in his tapestry of truths, a centerpiece around which every other aphorism lies.
El arte es garantía de la salud.
The literal translation is “art is a guarantee of health.” In other words, art can free the mind where nothing else can. For Vicente, yoga becomes that art. Gabby cooks and she paints. And so all I can do is keep writing. I write as a guarantee of my own health, and that of my relationship. I write so that I can reach conclusions I hadn’t even considered at the start of a piece. Because as I write, I am no longer identifying with the Cory of before, nor the Cory after. I am presence. I am inside myself. I am paz, tranquilidad, y libertad.
Respiro. Se que respiro.
And so miraculously, in arriving at that place of total awareness, further truths make themselves apparent. And so with my final few words, I’d like to address my sweet Gabriela directly, if that is alright.
Gabriela, there is no past, no future, without you. There is only the present, our present. If art is indeed a guarantee of health, this relationship is the artistic endeavor of which I will forever be most proud. Within the walls we have built lies the unique opportunity to rest inside of ourselves, to take refuge in a camp of our own creation. I know no other version of myself than who I am with you. With you, Gabriela, I am my most confident, my most proud, my most determined. I will follow you and I trust that you will follow me because our art extends beyond the identities we have forged, will forge. Our art is of the moment, always. Our art guarantees not just our health, our sanity, but our home. Gabriela, you are my home, en cualquier lugar y en todas partes. To be with you is to access that rare space where all peripheral aspects of the self wash away, and only what is essential remains.
And Gabriela, you are essential. We are essential. Movies like The Skin I Live In, with their rare ability to bridge those components of our lives of which we could otherwise only scratch the surface, are essential. I love you, Gabriela, and I will be with you always.
Siempre y para siempre, mi tesoro.
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Some housekeeping: I will be traveling through the Pacific Northwest the next couple of weeks and therefore unable to write my next newsletter. I know you all refresh your inboxes with anticipation on a biweekly basis, but you’ll have to wait a bit longer for Cory’s Reads #7.
Until then, stay safe everyone.