A woman’s silhouette is seen through barred frosted windows. The camera cuts to a surveillance camera and zooms out to reveal that woman in a skin colored bodysuit stretched out on a moss green sofa like a marble sculpture. She appears to have no contact with the world outside except through the intercom and dumbwaiter. Her room is populated by reproductions of Louise Bourgeois’ fabric works created by ripping apart the dresses in her closet that she refuses to wear, and covered by texts that line every inch of the wall. Pedro Almodóvar’s 2011 film The Skin I Live In, adapted from Thierry Jonquet’s 1984 novel Tarantula, tells the story of Vicente/Vera, played by Jans Cornet and Elena Anaya, who is imprisoned in the mansion of a deranged plastic
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The Skin I Live In reinterprets the relationship between the artist and his art, and the connotations of the reclining nude as mediated through the Titian’s Renaissance masterpiece Venus of Urbino. Robert’s mansion is filled with a collection of reclining nude paintings, ranging from Renaissance to Modern. Titian’s larger than life painting hangs on the central wall of the second story of Robert’s mansion. An idealized vision of feminine beauty lies recumbent on her bed with her alluring gaze fixed upon the viewer as she caresses her body. Her implicit meaning is ever present throughout the film despite being a simple element of the mise en scène. The figure of the classical nude denotes desire and possession both for her creator and her viewer. In David Rosand’s essay “So-And-So Reclining on her Couch,” he writes that the relationship between the painting and the painter is one of “the mastery of his medium [is] identified with the masterful possession of the beauty herself in every sense.” In other words, this relationship entails absorption of the human subjects into his art. The painter and his art become one and the same thing. The film later reveals that Vera is Robert’s scientific experiment––the product of a doctor wanting to create new life with transgenesis. As Robert enters into his private library, he turns on the flat screen television and gazes at Vera lying on her side reading a book in the pose of the reclining nude. Vera is Robert’s artistic vision realized. She is the object of which Robert imprints his desires onto, recreated in the image of his deceased wife whose memory haunts his every action and defines his character. Vera lies stretched out on a red bed with the light shining in a way that highlights the flesh toned bodysuit that becomes almost indistinguishable from real flesh. Robert gazes at Vera as though he is admiring a painting in
The Skin I Live In reinterprets the relationship between the artist and his art, and the connotations of the reclining nude as mediated through the Titian’s Renaissance masterpiece Venus of Urbino. Robert’s mansion is filled with a collection of reclining nude paintings, ranging from Renaissance to Modern. Titian’s larger than life painting hangs on the central wall of the second story of Robert’s mansion. An idealized vision of feminine beauty lies recumbent on her bed with her alluring gaze fixed upon the viewer as she caresses her body. Her implicit meaning is ever present throughout the film despite being a simple element of the mise en scène. The figure of the classical nude denotes desire and possession both for her creator and her viewer. In David Rosand’s essay “So-And-So Reclining on her Couch,” he writes that the relationship between the painting and the painter is one of “the mastery of his medium [is] identified with the masterful possession of the beauty herself in every sense.” In other words, this relationship entails absorption of the human subjects into his art. The painter and his art become one and the same thing. The film later reveals that Vera is Robert’s scientific experiment––the product of a doctor wanting to create new life with transgenesis. As Robert enters into his private library, he turns on the flat screen television and gazes at Vera lying on her side reading a book in the pose of the reclining nude. Vera is Robert’s artistic vision realized. She is the object of which Robert imprints his desires onto, recreated in the image of his deceased wife whose memory haunts his every action and defines his character. Vera lies stretched out on a red bed with the light shining in a way that highlights the flesh toned bodysuit that becomes almost indistinguishable from real flesh. Robert gazes at Vera as though he is admiring a painting in