On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , the film holds an 80 % approval rating based on reviews from 172 critics , with an average rating of 7.4 out of 10 . The site 's critical consensus reads " The Skin I Live In " lacks Almodovar 's famously charged romance , replaced with a wonderfully bizarre and unpredictable detour into arthouse ick . " . In May 2011 , Kirk Honeycutt , writing for '' The Hollywood Reporter '' , said " Along with such usual Almodóvar obsessions as betrayal , anxiety , loneliness , sexual identity , and death , the Spanish director has added a science-fiction element that verges on horror . But like many lab experiments , this melodramatic hybrid makes for an unstable fusion . Only someone as talented as Almodóvar could have mixed such elements without blowing up an entire movie . " Honeycutt continued : " The film 's design , costumes and music , especially Alberto Iglesias ' music , present a lushly beautiful setting , which is nonetheless a prison and house of horror . Almodóvar pumps his movie full of deadly earnestness and heady emotions . " David Gritten notes Almodóvar " reaches out tentatively into unexplored genre territory — horror ... Yet despite squirm-worthy moments ... the promise of horror gives way to Almodóvar 's broader , familiar preoccupations : identity , blood ties , disguises and genetic traits . " According to Gritten , " A list of the story 's various elements &mdash; date rape , murder , secrets , lies , mystery parents , gender ambiguity , unbreakable emotional bonds &mdash; confirms '' The Skin I Live In '' as essentially a melodrama . Yet Almodóvar 's story-telling is nowhere near as shrill as it once was : as a mature artist , he has refined his skills to a point where these soap-opera tropes assimilate smoothly into a complex whole .... Typically for Almodóvar , it all looks ravishing , thanks to production designer Antxon Gómez and cinematographer José Luis Alcaine . All three men have the gift of investing mundane objects with a unique sheen ; here even surgical instruments , about to be used malevolently , assume a dreamy , otherworldly quality . '' The Skin I Live In '' is the work of a master near the top of his game . " Upon its UK premiere , Peter Bradshaw gave it ( four of five stars ) , calling it " fantastically twisted " and " a truly macabre suspense thriller " — " Banderas is a wonderfully charismatic leading man ; Almodóvar has found in him what Hitchcock found in Cary Grant . He is stylish , debonair , but with a chilling touch of determination and menace . " In an October 2011 '' New York Times '' Critics ' Pick review , Manohla Dargis called the film " an existential mystery , a melodramatic thriller , a medical horror film or just a polymorphous extravaganza " ; according to Dargis : It takes time to get a handle on the story ( and even then , your grip may not be secure ) , though it 's instantly clear that something is jumping beneath the surface here , threatening to burst forth . Vera 's plight and the temporal shifts help create an air of unease and barely controlled chaos , an unsettling vibe that becomes spooky when Ledgard puts on a white lab coat and begins doing strange things with blood .... There are times in '' The Skin I Live In '' when it feels as if the whole thing will fly into pieces , as complication is piled onto complication , and new characters and intrigues are introduced amid horror , melodrama and slapstick .... Yet Mr. Almodóvar 's control remains virtuosic and the film hangs together completely , secured by Vera and Ledgard and a relationship that 's a Pandora 's box from which identity , gender , sex and desire spring . Dana Stevens noted it was Almodóvar 's " first attempt to blend elements of the horror genre with the high-camp , gender-bending melodrama that 's become his stock in trade " ; she called it " visually lush and thematically ambitious " , a film that " unfolds with a clinical chill we 're unaccustomed to feeling in this director 's films . '' The Skin I Live In '' is a math problem , not a poem . Still , what an elegant proof it is . " Stevens called it a " meditation on profound themes : memory , grief , violence , degradation , and survival " , a " multigenerational melodrama that slowly fuse s into a coherent ( if wackily improbable ) whole " , offering " aesthetic and intellectual gratification , but little in the way of emotional punch . " In a report for '' The Buenos Aires Herald '' , film critic Julio Nakamurakare wrote that : " The long name-dropping as flaunted by film critics also includes references to Herzog . Under which pretense , I 'm not quite sure . They may all be right , but the truth remains that '' The Skin I Live In '' , slow-moving and with a wayward , confusing narrative in spite of the explanatory intertitles for hare-brained viewers like this scribe , is an insatisfactory product on most counts , and Almodóvar 's admirable body of work may go to his own detriment , for it is inevitably compared with '' The Skin I Live In '' . Indeed , we have all learned to expect a head-twisting shocker from every move by Almodóvar , as in the weirdly fascinating '' Talk to Her '' , organically and genetically repulsive at first but oddly compulsive on further scrutiny . This is clearly not the case with '' The Skin I Live In '' . This time round , Almodóvar gets lost in the maze he himself has built in the image of Dr. Robert Ledgard , a calque of the sweetly , achingly , neurotically obsessed Ricky played by Banderas in '' Tie Me Up , Tie Me Down ! '' ( 1992 ) , in which the game of opposites functioned much more efficiently than in the shallow , disappointingly superficial '' The Skin I Live In '' . As can be surmised , '' The Skin I Live In '' fails to run smoothly , and , in spite of all the hype , there is no ' Almodóvar plunges into new philosophical depths ' here . " Anaya received the Goya Award for Best Actress . The film won Best Film Not in the English Language at the 65th British Academy Film Awards ; in previous years Almodóvar won that same award for his 1999 film '' All About My Mother '' and his 2002 film '' Talk to Her ''
65th British Academy Film Awards
65th British Academy Film Awards
The Skin I Live In