Film REVIEWS

GOTHIC HORROR THE SKIN I LIVE IN (LA PIEL QUE HABITO) (15) 120min ●●●●●

The Skin I Live In has all the elements of a campy Vincent Price B-movie. There is a meddlesome scientist driven mad by grief, a grisly revenge plot and a hapless victim, not to mention multiple murder, kidnap and rape. In the hands of Pedro Almodovar these stock ingredients are transformed into a macabre dance of death and desire that is all the more shocking for the sense of tightly controlled restraint that the director employs. This is gothic horror served with an icy precision.

Almodovar’s adaptation of the Thierry Jonquet novel Tarantula mixes together a lethal cocktail of influences from Mary Shelley to Eyes Without A Face, Edgar Allan Poe and Jacobean tragedy to the perverse romantic impulses of Hitchcock’s masterpiece Vertigo. The changing tones are handled with such smooth aplomb that Almodovar makes it look effortless. He constantly works against the grain casting the dashing Antonio Banderas as a modern monster and staging poisonous plot twists with such deadpan aplomb that the scream of shock freezes in your throat. Banderas is eminent plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard, a pioneer in the creation of artificial skin. His human guinea pig is patient Vera (Elena Anaya) who is kept in elegant confinement and wears a flesh-coloured suit to protect herself from harm. Harm comes from all different quarters as Almodovar unleashes a typical spider’s web of intricately related flashbacks revealing the full scope of an extraordinary tale.

The less you know about the plot of The Skin I Live In the better. Part of the film’s appeal lies in the way that it leads you calmly by the hand through some appalling events and finds a haunting sadness at the heart of a horrific story. Measured, playful and spellbinding. (Allan Hunter) Selected release from Fri 26 August. See feature, page 64.

DRAMA ATTENBERG (18) 95min ●●●●●

ACTION/ADVENTURE/DRAMA COLOMBIANA (12A) 107min ●●●●● ROMANCE/COMEDY FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS (15) 109min ●●●●●

Unfolding in a deserted seaside Greek industrial town, Attenberg charts the gradual emotional awakening of a withdrawn young woman Marina (impressive newcomer Ariane Labed), whose dying architect father Spyros (Vangelis Mourikis) encourages her to embrace life. Although she experiments by tongue- kissing her best friend Bella (Evangelia Randou), Marina is repelled by the idea of sexual intercourse, and prefers to take refuge in the nature documentaries of Sir David Attenborough hence the film’s intentionally mispronounced title.

It’s hard to avoid drawing connections to Dogtooth, given that writer-director Athina Rachel Tsangari produced the earlier film, and its director Giorgos Lanthimos appears here as a passing engineer, who sleeps with Marina. Certainly Tsangari has heeded Jean-Luc Godard’s advice to put ‘everything into a film’, playfully incorporating animal imitations, word games and bizarrely synchronised walks performed by the female leads. Shot in long, uninterrupted takes, this clinical examination of sex and death intrigues and mystifies in equal measures. (Tom Dawson) Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Fri 2–Thu 8 Sep. GFT, Glasgow, Mon 26–Thu 29 Sep.

96 THE LIST 25 Aug–22 Sep 2011

After her breakthrough roles as the doe-eyed alien love interest in James Cameron’s Avatar, and as a sexed-up Uhura in JJ Abrams’s Star Trek reboot, Zoe Saldana clearly has the international profile to get almost any picture made. Almost any picture might have been better than Colombiana, another blurred photocopy of an action film from prolific producer and writer Monsieur Luc Besson.

With Olivier Megaton (Transporter 3) taking on the

director’s duties with the slick anonymity expected on a Besson production, Colombiana features Saldana as Cataleya, yet another super-soldier hit-woman, biding time with assassinations while seeking clues about how to avenge her parents, whose murder she witnessed as a child in Bogota. Working with his regular scribe Robert Mark

Kamen (Taken, The Fifth Element) Besson returns to the lone female assassin trope he mined far more successfully in Nikita. Saldana’s fresh, glossy look doesn’t disguise a strictly-by-the-numbers action flick that’s too close to recent Angelina Jolie vehicle Salt. At least Jolie’s character in that film had some grit to her. (Eddie Harrison) General release from Fri 9 Sep.

Jamie (Black Swan’s Mila Kunis) is a supposedly hard-nosed NYC talent scout with a soft spot for Hollywood romances due to an absent father and lovelorn mother (Patricia Clarkson). A routine assignment with designer Dylan (Justin Timberlake) leads to a casual friendship, and regular bouts of sex. But Jamie’s passion for rom-coms has taught her that strings are attached, and soon she and Dylan are falling in love for real.

Gluck’s debut, teen flick Easy A, offered a saltier view of relationships than the sappy Friends With Benefits, which pretends to deflate clichés while studiously observing them. Devices like a flash-mob musical sequence, which brings the couple together, reek of Hollywood contrivance, while sentimental manipulations involving Dylan’s dad (Richard Jenkins) and his struggle with Alzheimer’s are equally corny. For all its dirty talk and supposed frankness about

sex, Friends with Benefits has little in the way of laughs, romance or truth; it’s just as bland a confection as the vanilla rom-coms it apes. (Eddie Harrison) General release from Fri 9 Sep.