Pedro Almodóvar's film The Skin I Live In is a film which makes me think about the skin as a symptom...well, if the ego is a symptom for Lacan and the skin the inmost kin of the ego for Anzieu, put together, we can perhaps say by way of a deductive conclusion that the skin too is a symptom.
The husband whose wife cheats him through the skin gets all burnt and the doctor husband takes after the smell of her burnt skin but she cannot take it and commits suicide. Then comes the second episode in which his daughter is raped, again through the skin! Sexual violation is let in by the skin and the trauma kills her in the end. The man then kidnaps the rapist and performs a vaginoplasty, making a woman of him and then builds the strongest artificial skin for her...he falls for her gradually only to be betrayed at the end.
The drives are complex here: the doctor may begin the experiment with the purpose of taking revenge on his daughter's rapist but the skin he gives her and the face is that of her dead wife! He even names the experiment after her! The revenge is slowly replaced by first pleasure and then love and makes for a startling situation:---
A man making love with a man-turned-woman who had raped his daughter and is made to look like his dead wife who had cheated on him! The man tries to produce an orifice where there is none so that he can make inroads into the inner fold of the skin through the sexual act which was responsible for both the demises of his wife and daughter in two different ways. And in all this, the skin is the site for violence, violation, pleasure and a sense of identity which dissipates with time...
The Skin I Live In is compelling in triggering these intriguing thoughts and one of the most psychoanalytically informed film directors of our times does not disappoint!
The patient's escapade at the end only underscores how the skin is a symptom because it often blurs the fine line between the self and the ego: a distinction, we must try and maintain at any cost.
The husband whose wife cheats him through the skin gets all burnt and the doctor husband takes after the smell of her burnt skin but she cannot take it and commits suicide. Then comes the second episode in which his daughter is raped, again through the skin! Sexual violation is let in by the skin and the trauma kills her in the end. The man then kidnaps the rapist and performs a vaginoplasty, making a woman of him and then builds the strongest artificial skin for her...he falls for her gradually only to be betrayed at the end.
The drives are complex here: the doctor may begin the experiment with the purpose of taking revenge on his daughter's rapist but the skin he gives her and the face is that of her dead wife! He even names the experiment after her! The revenge is slowly replaced by first pleasure and then love and makes for a startling situation:---
A man making love with a man-turned-woman who had raped his daughter and is made to look like his dead wife who had cheated on him! The man tries to produce an orifice where there is none so that he can make inroads into the inner fold of the skin through the sexual act which was responsible for both the demises of his wife and daughter in two different ways. And in all this, the skin is the site for violence, violation, pleasure and a sense of identity which dissipates with time...
The Skin I Live In is compelling in triggering these intriguing thoughts and one of the most psychoanalytically informed film directors of our times does not disappoint!
The patient's escapade at the end only underscores how the skin is a symptom because it often blurs the fine line between the self and the ego: a distinction, we must try and maintain at any cost.
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