A Pele que Habito: summary and explanation of the film
Directed by Pedro Almodóvar, the Spanish film of drama and psychological suspense was released in 2011 and continues to surpass viewers from all over the world.
The plot was inspired by the French romance Thierry Jonquet, launched in 1995. Robert is a plastic surgery that is developing a dark and mysterious project. Vera, in his "cobaia" of him, lives imprisoned in his house, under permanent surveillance.
Trust or trailer the film below:
Attention: from this point on, you will find spoilers!
Main characters and cast
Robert (Antonio Banderas)
O cirurgião e cientista é um homem marked by the lost that he sofreu. We are committed to the death of the wife and the daughter, who began to work on the GAL project, the creation of an artificial fur that defies the ethical principles of its profession.
Vera (Elena Anaya)
Prisoner at Robert's house, Vera lives locked in a room, her captor being watched. After being subjected to various surgeries, she becomes a scientist, who forces dozens of tests and uses her body to experiment with synthetic skin.
Vicente (Jan Cornet)
O young stylist works at the loja de roupa da mãe, but his life is altered when he commits a crime. During a feast of marriage, the violent Norma, in the presence of Robert. Starting today, he has dried medical hair and disappears without leaving a trace.
Marilia (Marisa Paredes)
It would work at Robert's house, a woman and his great accomplice of him for a long time of the plot, helping to cover the crimes. During a conversation with Vera, she confesses that she lives an illicit paixão as a pai do cirurgião and that it is, in truth, her filho.
Norma (Blanca Suárez)
Filha de Gal and Robert, Norma was deeply traumatized during her childhood, when she assisted in a tragic death. Later, after being attacked by Vicente, she piora and ends up throwing her own life.
Zeca (Roberto Alamo)
Filho de Marilia and meio-irmão de Robert, he is a bandit who, not passed away, fugiu with Gal and provokes or accident that left or seu body of him burned. Years later, he returns to the local area and attacks Vera while she is imprisoned no more than a quarter.
Complete summary of the film
Ação that occurs not present
Or a film comes as a woman who is imprisoned in four and receives food through a compartment on the wall. Robert, or a home-based surgical scientist, is doing non-laboratory experiences.
When she enters a room to visit Vera, she discovers that she causes ferments not her own body. While she takes care of two bad bruises, she asks when everything will end.
A lecture for the colleagues of the profession, Robert presents his revolutionary project: a very resistant artificial skin that is called "GAL", in homage to his wife who has never died. A more detailed scientist addresses the end of the presentation, embracing the moral and ethical principles of the procedure.
Or doctor claims that he used pig cells, not human cells, to obtain the result. Logo We perceive that the mentiu: pele was raised from Vera's genetic material, her prisoner from her, and applied to her entire body. As a desperate measure to escape, she tries to seduce him, mas or homem it goes away. Numa talks to Marília, an entrepreneur, we discover that Vera's face is the same as Robert's old wife.
When or where the house is outside, Marilia is visited by filho. Zeca is a violent criminal who is on the run from the police and wants to alter his physiognomy. However, when he manages to enter non-local, he sees the images of Vera through the surveillance cameras and goes behind it.
When she manages to open the door, she mistakes him as Gal and advances to the top of the door, abusing the prisoner. Robert chega na time and kills Zeca with a shot, hugging Vera in a row. Nessa noite, you sleep together and the "meu amor" chama.
Marilia clears the crime dinner and tells Vera that Zeca and Robert were irmãos, who was the born doctor of his extra-conjugal relationship as a former employer. Years before, Gal and Zeca fled and fled, plus a car accident and a woman was a totally burned-out body. Despite two efforts by her husband to recover her, she ended up committing suicide.
Passed: or what happened 6 years before
Approximately not half of the film, the narrative travels to the past and shows what led to the events. Robert goes to a wedding party with Norma, his adolescent filha, who was in treatment. A moça exchanges olhares as a young man, Vicente, who invites you for a passeio no jardim. You two are wrapped, but he ignores your requests to stop batting her, which is unconscious.
Robert finds Norma fainted and does not garden and tries to help her, but when she wakes up, she has a psychiatric attack. Logo em followed, ele vê um homem escaping from a motorcycle. From back to hospital, to a young man who was very panicky from homens, he ended up getting caught by janela.
O estuprador, Vicente, work as a stylist na loja de roupas da mãe. Before leaving the local, he comments as a friend that he is thinking of going embora. Depois, when he travels on a motorcycle, he is chased and sequestered by Robert, waking up cornered, a dark cave. The dryer goes to visit him on the face of his beard, giving chloroform to clean it, followed by it.
Several doctors emerge from an operating room, where a sexual redesignation surgery is performed in Vicente. When he remembers and discovers what happens, he is terrified, but or surgery fails that he is just beginning. Revealing that he is Norma's father, he confronts the young man, who misses that he has consumed substances and does not lembra directly.
Some time later, Robert performs new surgeries on Vicente's body and face, implanting the artificial fur that he was raising. Ao throw the curatives gives his face, he fails that now or seu nome of him will become Vera.
Com revolta, to his victim he tears all the clothes that he sequestrador lhe deu. To get lidar as a cativeiro, begin to practice yoga and use the maquiagem that you received to undo the walls of the room.
Final do film: from volta to present
Back to the present, we see that Vera and Robert are living an apparent relationship and she has achieved some freedom, even when shopping with Marilia. When he is away, or doctor and visited by a former colleague, who is present at Vicente's operation.
Either homem shows a non-daily news about the disappearance of the young man or confronts his serious crimes. He or she ameaça as a weapon, but Vera enters without writing and fails that she was a lie: I was operated because I wanted to. Nesse moment, get to see the non-daily text or old portrait.
With this gesture, she passes to obtain the trust of the captor. Na mesma noite, when he got distracted, Vera sticks a weapon that was hidden in a bag and kills Robert. Next, he gives a shot at Marilia in the local foge.
Returning to loja da mãe, he started to crash and didn't know what to say. Whenever no one recognizes her new appearance, she declares: "Eu sou o Vicente".
A Pele que Habito: explanation and interpretation
A suspenseful narrative capable of awakening anxiety and half of us viewers, Pele que Habita It also addresses deep questions about humanity, its behaviors and emotions. Shocking e controversial For many, it peels violence from its images and themes, or long-metragem deserves a careful reflection on the messages that it carries.
Enter vingança, science and ethics
Or entangle it, before mais, uma vingança narrative with various dimensions. Robert is a homem whose life crumbles, depois da morte da wife e da filha. In mourning, he decided to lock up his aesthetic procedures clinic and needed to find a way to cope with everything he felt.
Gal, a former wife, has fled with Zeca and fled as a body that was killed by an accident. Or husband takes care of the, in the intention of ajudá-la, idealized to create an artificial fur. However, it was not in time for the woman to finish her life, something that was repeated with Norma, on both of them.
After lost to his family, he decided to go after Norma's aggressor and, through him, conclude or project. As we can see from the lecture he gives to colleagues, it is a controversial issue that challenges his moral and ethical conduct medical and scientific enquanto. GAL, an artificial skin bred by Robert, combines the DNA of a human being with another species, something highly prohibited.
Willing to punish or homem who attacks filha, he performs his experiences with no type of guilt, or seja: or ódio conduz à desumanização give him an individual, which happens to be barely seen as an object for scientific purposes. On the other hand, all the surgeries that he performs do not refer to his wife, mainly his face, they are intended to approximate the image of his old wife.
How was the transformation of Vicente in Vera fosse a desperate attempt by ter Gal de volta e rewrite your history. Na sequência disso, he can also "hit as you tell" as Zeca, or meio-irmão as which he was brought. Depois from interrupting the rape dinner and rescuing "cobaia", and how the process of vingança is concluded. From this day on, Robert wishes to have a loving relationship with "a woman who he created."
Artistic breeding as a way to survive
Something that we can perceive from or começo do film é a presence of works of art practically all dinners. Robert, or homeowner, is an obvious appreciator of painting and collects large paintings for all comfort. Contudo, we can affirm that these images apontam a possible interpretation on the meaning of Pele que Habita.
In this way, the processes of artistic creation seem to be defined as ways two individuals will follow their lives and processarem emoções and more somber feelings, obtaining some mode of relief or taste.
The position of Vicente / Vera during the cativeiro is altered no moment in which, using a pencil to make up the eyes, he began to compulsively write the walls. From day on, she will multiply the unfolds, the statues and tie the dresses that she will raise, inside her prison.
These works emerge as ways of dealing with a new identity and the various violences that he created. Despite all the obstacles, the reigning criação still fears its existence, that keep living, something that we confirm by repeating the word "respite" within the walls of the room.
Ja robert he looks like a great breeder because he is responsible for the transformation of Vera, which she repeatedly admires and considers her first work.
Identity, gender and enclosure
Ainda que possa gerar alguma confusão us spectators, it matters to leave that or entanglement of Pele que Habita It does not revolve around a trans woman. Contrary hair, the various surgeries that or person faces, including sexual redesignation, foram feitas against sua vontade, drying hair.
In this way, her body happens to represent a prison within another prison. Apart from all the physical alterations that he never wanted and how he feared to deal with, Vicente became known as Vera and his abuser expected him to radically change his way of agir. At the beginning, she saw her rejection of this femininity, symbolized by the moment she tears all the dresses.
In this new condition, he lives in fights as experienced violence against women in a sexist society, going from aggressor to victim. Barnacle, then, that the only way to leave that place and collaborate with Robert's fantasy and win his trust in him.
Assim, to sua gender performance She is changing: she started to wear makeup, high jumps, dresses and other accessories usually associated with women. He also pretends to keep loving feelings homem that ruined the last years of his life and I tried to defend him, when he confronted his old colleague.
It is about a strategy of escape and survival, something that he confirms when he finally kills his captors and frees himself. When the main person meets me, we are sure that his identity has not changed, peel the words he utters: "Sou Vicente, I just escaped."
In this way, or the end of the narrative, it is understood that the gender identity of an individual does not necessarily take on the appearance of his body or his behavior, but rather how it is recognized.
Other aspects and characteristics of the film
The suspense of the narrative becomes, to a large extent, às duas linhas temporais que interseam. Or big plot twist It happens, approximately, not half of the film, when we perceive that Vicente and Vera are the same person. There are also several dinners of tension that accelerate our heartbeats: violent attacks and persecution, accompanied by an eletrizing sonorous trilha.
On the other hand, or entanglement addresses other issues that we do not mention above, such as solidão and infidelity. There is also a highlight for questions related to mental health that torments various personagens of the plot and determined their tragic destinies.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that Pele que Habita I have been compared to an ancient and famous French horror film, which seems to have served as inspiration. Or longa-metragem Os Olhos sem Rosto, launched by Georges Franju in 1960, a failure of a surgery that commits several sequestros to try to breed an artificial fur for a filha, which has been seriously injured by an accident.
Poster and complete technical sheet of the film
| Qualification | The Skin I Live In (not original) A Pele que Habito (not Brazil) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Director | Pedro Almodovar |
| Gender | Thriller, Suspense |
| Country of origin | Spain |
| Duration | 120 minutes |
| Classification | Over 16 years old |
| Launching | September 2011 Spain) November 2011 (Brazil) |
| Awards | BAFTA 2012: Melhor Filme de Língua Estrangeira GOYA 2021: Melhor Atriz e Melhor Ator |
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