The film is ostensibly a revenge story, but through Robert’s inner deficiencies and the events that lead up to them, it explores the complex emotions of revenge, love, and control, raising questions about our essential human deficiencies and how to resolve them.
At first glance, the plot of La piel que habito The Skin I Live In seems like a simple revenge story. There are countless films about revenge, albeit in a rather crude and unique way, but it doesn’t particularly delve into the moral and social dilemmas of revenge: the vengeance that a father feels when his daughter is raped is something that anyone can relate to, and Vincente, the criminal, is not a character that evokes the dilemma of revenge, even if he seems like an innocent young man. Of course, given that he is using a method of revenge that is not socially acceptable, we can ask questions such as whether private revenge against a criminal is justified and what is the appropriate level of punishment for a criminal. But is that all there is to this movie?
More than just a revenge story, this movie taps into the deepest emotions and desires of human beings. While the movie is ostensibly about revenge, what it’s really exploring is more complex: the instinctive human desire for revenge and the unexpected emotional shifts that occur when that desire is fulfilled. What makes this movie so interesting is that it sheds light on this inner transformation.
In fact, there are many strange aspects of this movie that cannot be explained as a simple revenge story. First, the purpose of the main character, Robert, is not clear. If Robert’s goal was to get revenge on his rapist, the story would be much simpler. This is not to say that Vincente’s gender reassignment surgery is ineffective. On the contrary, it was the perfect revenge, as it gave Vincente a life of pain rather than death, and made him experience firsthand the pain his daughter felt. But the problem lies in the day of Vincente’s rape. If Robert’s purpose was truly revenge, he would have shot and killed both Seca and Vincente. Both of them have mortally wounded Robert, and now that the artificial skin experiment is complete, there’s no reason to keep Vincente alive. Instead, Robert turns the gun on Vincente, shoots Seca, kills him, and hugs Vincente tightly. He even goes so far as to say that when he makes love to Vincente that night, he understands when Vincente says he can’t penetrate her because of what happened during the day, and he just wants to hold her. Did Robert fall in love with Vincente, the man who raped his daughter? And if so, how is that possible?
To understand Robert’s choices, we need to look at his life sequentially. Robert was born to a wealthy family of “redguards” and Marelia, a maidservant, who was the next best thing to carry on the family name when his mother was unable to bear children. Although not detailed in the movie, this past must have left him with a fatal flaw. The lack of true love from his mother and the power of his wealthy upbringing combined in a twisted way to create a loneliness that led Robert to express his need for control. This deficiency and power imbalance destroyed Robert’s psychological stability, leading him to take more extreme actions when faced with situations beyond his control. This pattern of behavior is seen when he develops an artificial skin and forces Vincente to experiment on it.
In time, Robert marries Gal and they have a daughter. But Gal, tired of his unhealthy love affair, falls in love with Seka, who hides in an outbuilding in search of refuge, and together they run away and are involved in a car accident. The accident leaves Gal with burns all over her body, and after Robert’s intense efforts to bring her back to consciousness, she takes her own life after confronting her horrifying reflection. This series of experiences must have further stirred up Robert’s essential deficiency. The process by which he nearly regained his wife, who had escaped his grasp, only to lose her for good, made him even more desperate. The emotions of anger and revenge would have been present, of course, but the desire that operated within Robert was far more essential. For him, Vincente was a test subject to be manipulated and controlled, a possession with the potential to fulfill his own deficiencies. Revenge was simply an emotion to ease the guilt that would inevitably come with fulfilling that goal.
The movie deals with the intersection of these complex emotions, and weaves in more than just revenge. Vincente is not just a victim and an object of revenge, but a person with the potential to fill a deep-seated need within Robert. In his relationship with Vincente, Robert is constantly vacillating between vengeance and affection, control and compassion, and this conflict of emotions drives the film’s tension.
And as they spend more time together, Vincente begins to recognize this side of Robert. When Vincente asks him, “So what are you going to do with me now?” and he replies, “I’ll have to think about it,” she realizes that he is not someone who will be satisfied with simply getting back at her. Furthermore, when Vincente learns of Robert’s past from Marellia on the day he was raped by Seca, he becomes convinced that Robert has a fatal flaw: loneliness. Vincente then reassures Robert that he will never leave him, and finally completes his revenge by killing him for trusting him so completely. Perhaps the true revenge in this movie is not Robert’s revenge, but Vincente’s revenge.
In the end, “La piel que habito The Skin I Live In” is a story about a man who wants to solve the existential deficiency of loneliness, but is crushed by his desire. The fact that he made Vincent’s face exactly the same as his wife’s, and the fact that he constantly observed Vincent in his room, can be interpreted in this context. And if we interpret the movie in this way, we can ask a variety of questions beyond the dilemma of revenge. Is loneliness an essential human deficiency, and is the only way to solve this deficiency is to meet someone and form a relationship? But how do we deal with the pain that such relationships can bring?
These questions are not unique to this movie. They are recurring issues in many works that deal with the essential struggles of human existence, and La piel que habito The Skin I Live In sheds new light on these issues. What choices do we make between revenge and love, control and compassion, lack and fulfillment? The film poses these questions to the audience and takes them on a journey to find the answers.
