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The Skin I Live In

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

PIc from N.Y.F.F coverage

Story : Ever since his wife was burned in a car crash, Dr. Robert Ledgard, an eminent plastic surgeon, has been interested in creating a new skin with which he could have saved her. After twelve years, he manages to cultivate a skin that is a real shield against every assault. In addition to years of study and experimentation, Robert needed three more things: no scruples, an accomplice, and a human guinea pig.

Opens Friday, October 14, 2011 (Limited 10/14)

Runtime:1 hr. 57 min.

 

Interview with Actor Antonio Banderas

 

(Q) : This movie is wonderful. Obviously it marks your first collaboration with Pedro in twenty-one years. What were the differences coming back together again?
 
(Antonio Banderas) : Well, you know, this is something that I- I don't know if I should say or not. Coming from somebody else it's very nice actually. For me, I'm very close to the movie. It's difficult just to be objective about the things that I have done.

But I have to tell you that it's true. The first time I saw the movie I received the same impression that he, I mean it was he, made me play notes of my own acting that I didn't even know I had. This particular time in my life, fifty-one years old, opened a door for me to understand another side of me, in terms of acting and in front of the camera. Probably has to do with matureness but it has to do with him. Because on paper when I read the script and I saw the character that, you know, is bigger than life, obviously, with the pyschopath.

Normally the tendency for, I was going to say any actor, but I will say just me, you know, was just to go big with it. And Pedro was the one who said, 'No, we are not going to go in that direction. We are going to just contain him. We are going to just hold him back. We are going to make the character very minimalist and very economical in gesture. And I don't want you to comment the character with the audience and tell them how bad you are or I am the villain in the movie.

I want the character to be very unexpected and mysterious and we don't know, really, what is going to be the next step that he's going to take.' And so though I resisted during the period of rehearsals, a little bit, that idea, he totally convinced me and I did what I think actually any actor who works with Pedro Almodovar should do which is to take a leap of faith.

With Pedro Almodovar it's best, actually. And especially to me. Because, you know, all those movies that we did in the '80s and these twenty one years in the middle, as you said before, at the end of the process still, you know, very far away from having a real opinion of what is the meaning of me in this movie and what the meaning's all about.

I have to recognize already that he made me play in a universe and in a territory, which I think is where creation is. And creation is not in the comfortability of directing when you are very comfortable. And I remember commenting that to a beautiful actor that I respect very much.

I think she's a New Yorker, actually. Laura Linney. She always said to me, you know, 'When you are comfortable acting, Antonio, doing nothing, you suggest things that you are carrying in a bag of experiences and a cumulative work and experience and whatever. And you are putting out there.

But in reality you're just using something that you know is going to work for you in front of an audience. But it's not where creation is. Creation is painful. And when you feel very insecure it's because you are actually stepping in different territories of your own personality as an actor or as an artist.' And so that's what Pedro did to me twenty-one years after. He just slapped me made me just kind of wake up to the fact and I am very happy.

I am very happy that that happened. Not only for this movie but it made me reflect, again, back to what the source of my work probably should be in the years to come. So it has been from every point of view a celebration just to meet with him.

(Q) : So in taking on this part, the thing is that he's not really a villain, he's also a victim, in a way.
 
(Antonio Banderas) : Yeah.
 
(Q) : So how did you play that in your head in terms of knowing that the character, although he gets crazier in his direction?
 
(Antonio Banderas) : Well, once we determined, you know, what the character should be all about. And we studied certain psychopaths, you know, about real characters that existed. And there was one specifically we were talking very much with Pedro and the other actors in the beginning of rehearsal about this Austrian guy that used to have his daughter for twenty one years in the basement in his house. And he just made six kids with her. I mean you write that in the script nobody would believe it.

So it just tells you that sometimes reality is way bigger than anything that we can tell in fiction. But anyway this guy actually when journalists approached, people who surrounded him, stuff like that, describe him as a wonderful guy. Charming person, well dressed, polite, you know, well mannered. And, you know, he used to go to church on Sundays maybe. And but the guy performed this kind of second life, this kind of darkness inside of himself. Hidden. Because Almodovar defended to me that this character melt in society perfectly. He's undetectable.

And so that's one of the reasons that we need the character like that, too. But then once in the specific of shooting, when we started principal photography and we already had the idea of what we wanted to do very clear in both sides, on the side of Pedro and myself, what I couldn’t do is just to establish a morality adjustment of where the character continuously wishes to much of a burden to carry all around the movie and to play the whole entire arc of what the character is all about.

So what I did is compartment the character completely. And I established almost like- I needed to just create pieces of a puzzle that I was not going to put together. That I was giving Pedro for him to work. Material for him to work. And in those pieces I tried to run away from the character because of the natural way that he asked me to perform. He doesn’t feel any kind of guiltiness. And is totally in disaffection with the other's pain. What I tried to play in my mind continuously was the image of a family doctor.

Somebody who is actually not involved in what the story is talking about. I described that to some journalists this morning. But to just give you an example, and it's usable to any other part of the movie for me, but to give you an example is you remember the dildo scene, which is funny and scary all at the same time? I never played it as it is, in my mind. In my mind I played like a doctor prescribing pills. That's it.

You take two in the morning, two in the afternoon, three at night with a glass of milk, and in three months you're going to be perfect. That's what my game was inside. I wasn't playing the mean guy that is just executing kind of a mean proposal to this person in order to keep the thing open. No. Forget it. For me it was the family doctor, in a nice way, he's just trying to good for the patient that he has in front of him. And the rest of the movie for me was always like that. With very little exceptions.
 
(Q) : Did you 'Shadow of a Doubt' at all? The Hitchcock movie about the charming guy who kills the ladies?
 
(Antonio Banderas): Yes. Yes I saw it.
 
(Q) : Because when you're talking about it, it sounds very much like that kind of character.
 
(Antonio Banderas) : Well, you know, that is the type of character, or the type of acting actually, not character, that Pedro wants me to play. He talked to me very much about Cary Grant in certain areas of the movie. And he showed me a movie, 'The Red Circle' with Alain Delon and Jean-Louis Trintignant. But basically he made a lot of the proposals to me to watch movies of film noir made in the '40s and '50s because the acting was different.

It wasn't acting. It was more laid back. It was not so active in terms of describing reality in every little single detail as acting has start changing probably at the end of the '50s, beginning of the '60s with Jimmy Dean and Marlon Brando. But, you know, that type of acting. No, he want me to be that type of actors like Robert Mitchum that attack those characters in a totally different way of acting. In a certain way with more classicism.

More back to another ways of producing narrative. And especially when the actors are the ones who are doing it. The only times in the movie that I remember actually being on the moment of what the story is telling is there is a moment that he asked me for the tenth time, you know, 'Why are you doing this to me?' And this is a moment that I was watching some of the material that I am using for the surgery room.

And he just leave that aside, goes to him, and he says, 'You remember that party? You remember my daughter?' And, 'Blah, blah, blah. Well, that was my daughter. Blah, blah, blah.' I said, 'Well, yeah. But I was stumbled where I wasn't. And I am not going to forget any of the things that happened that day.' And he leaves. That is the moment that the character comes down off that kind of model and take consciousness of what he's doing.
 
(Q) : Where that emerged.
 
(Antonio Banderas) : Right. And then the story may seem to be a story about revenge. And definitely it plays a role in the whole entire thing. But I don't think it's the main purpose of the guy. I think it's what triggers. It's the excuse that he uses to actually start walking in a way darker path than inside himself. I mean this is something that the guy's carrying in himself, that possibility of becoming God. Which, I think, at the end of the movie and when you get out and you reflect about what you have seen, for me floating during the whole entire movie there is a different reflection of what you see. For me the whole movie is about creation. It's about art.

It's about the possibility that especially a movie director has to create identities and change them. Create a universe. Create the world, actually, that Pedro Almodovar creates always in his movies that is very similar to the world in which we live. But it's just not totally. It's slightly off. There is something that is not exactly as the world is. Not realism, actually where he plays. And in my point of view. I mean he may come over here and say, 'I disagree with Antonio'. Which is very possible.

But for me that is floating during the whole entire movie because ultimately the guy is almost like a- he's a monster, of course, but is an artist in a very strange way. He created a masterpiece. And there are references, very slight references. I could have in my bedroom a monitor like this monitor all the time. But it's not like that. It's the size of the whole entire wall. It's the movie screen in which he's watching his own creation. And he is, you know, creates a close up, bring the girl up here.

And eventually he jumps on the other side of the screen and he becomes an actor of his own movie. It's just a kind of game that is hidden in the movie but at the end for me is what the movie ultimately is all about. And even the fear that happens in a scene very early in the movie, the fear that he feels, my character feels when his masterpiece is proposing the path to follow. When she's saying, 'Why don't we live like normal persons?'

And he says, 'Well, we are not normal people,' you know. And he's trying to escape out of the situation and she stops and sees that example of using an effect on that- on him, you know, because he's supposed to be the creator but now I am rebelling, you know, against that. And she's the one who's proposing you made me. So use me.'

And opens a totally completely new expectation of him of having the possibility of joining a universe with this being in a totally different way than he planned in the beginning. And that is disturbing for the creator. It's the only thing that really disturbs him for a moment in the movie. Because many people may feel like he's falling in love with her. I don't think so. I think he's falling in love with himself. I mean with her, with himself.
 
(Q) : With his creation.
 
(Antonio Banderas): Yeah, he's falling in love with his creation. And the possibility, I mean, I remember making that scene and thinking what Leonardo da Vinci would have thought about the possibility of having a very strong, real relationship with La Gioconda. So all of those things are spinning around the movie.

But now this is not something that I was questioning when I was doing it. I couldn’t. It's just unactable. You cannot act those things. So the method that I used is what I said to you before, just to be very specific and compartment the whole entire thing and just do that leap of faith, putting myself in the hands of my creator, my personal Dr. Ledgard, to make with me whatever he wanted to make.

And following exactly his instructions to a point that sometimes was unbelievable. It's almost like the quantum physics of acting. He was in this meagerworld, you know, about the eyebrow or about the way that you walk or the details that no other director I've worked with before would have put so much attention that he did, you know.

Instead of having these two fingers why don't you have three? Things like that. And then you try just to take all of that and make it natural. Make it believable, you know. Because the amount of that and the information that he provided you with is enormous sometimes.
 
(Q) : Did he explain why he actually wanted you to watch some of the older films and then portray more of a character like Robert Mitchum when the audience would not be those that was watching those film today.
 
(Antonio Banderas): Because he wanted, you know, the character to be really, really cold. Those actors they had that tendency to be almost invisible. Especially Mitchum, for example, was very much like that. It's a perfect example of that. But even Cary Grant. Even Cary Grant sometimes when he was not playing comedy.
 
(Q) : He could be a tough guy.
 
(Antonio Banderas): It doesn't matter, you know. The thing is that if you don't make a wink of an eye to the audience. It was not even the guy in 'The Silence of the Lambs' that eventually he makes those winks to an audience in the way, I remember that scene, everybody remember that scene where he calls her and does this kind of thing with his mouth. These kind of things and then you know that there is something really disturbing in the mind of this guy. The type of physical things that he used to do that he didn't want not one of those things to be there.

No, no. Not a whistle that he would always repeat. These kind of things you put in these type of movies that make, you know, the audience say, 'Oh, here he comes.' No. Because at the same time the guy, it's true what you said at the beginning, there is such an empathy with him because the first part of the movie, if you realize that it's just a question, no answers. But the only thing that you learn about that part is that this guy has a very tormented past. His wife died. His daughter is in a mental institution.

So you empathize with this guy. You don't know yet what that woman is locked in a room, what is her relationship with him. Why this other woman is telling him to kill her. Why? You know? It's almost like, the feeling is almost the feeling of, that first hour of the movie it's like the roller coaster that you go, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh and you know something is going to happen. You don't know what it is.

And there is a moment when they start sleeping and they start going in the flashback and you go, 'Oh,' and then the movie has taken these violent turns that are surprisingly funny sometimes. I think it's not because of the gags of the movie. I think it's because they all know the situation. 'Oh my God. Is this going to happen, really?' It's just it takes you so far away that it produces these kind of reactions.
 
(Q) : This has been called your best movie role in years. Do you agree with that?
 
(Antonio Banderas) : I don’t know. I really don’t know. Maybe when I am seventy-five and I look back and I say, you know, maybe yes. But at this particular time in my life I don't know. I know the satisfaction that I find basically in the eyes of Pedro when we talk about the movie. And he's satisfied with Elena. He's satisfied with me.

And with the movie that he wanted to do. And it's beautiful. In our days when, in which we are trying all the time to conquer the box office and make movies that are, you know, that we cut the peaks and the lows and try to make something that is very much in a box, the fast that you take and you eat it. To find somebody that is just so pure. You make like the movie or not.

That's a different deal. I'm not talking about that. I'm not talking about the result. I'm talking about somebody who had the balls to actually just jump in that territory and not bend. To continue being pure and faithful to what he was thirty years ago. And didn't change. And that, at this particular moment in my life, is priceless.
 
(Q) : What does it mean to you now? How is that going to change?
 
(Antonio Banderas): Well, I said a little bit of it during the whole thing, you know, but basically it means a big reflection about me in front of the camera, me as an actor. What are the things that I want to say? How? It pushed me back to a certain space of inner reality with myself and to confront- I know the result of what 'The Skin I Live In', the result of what it means to me, that will come in the years to come.
 
(Q) : And next?
 
(Antonio Banderas): And next I change the skin for fur.
 
(Q) : What is that movie?
 
(Q) : 'Puss in Boots'.
 
 (Q) : How about 'Automata"?
 
(Antonio Banderas): 'Automata' is a movie, you know, when we were working with Pedro, Elena did a movie with this young director in Spain called Gabe Ibanez. And they did a movie called 'Hierro'. And so she brought me a new script that he wrote with a brochure. Beautiful about a movie he wants to make about a concept called singularity. And this is about robots and it's a science fiction movie but it's an auteur movie. It's not a Hollywood movie. It's philosophical reflection about singularity. And so I'm going to produce it and I may act in it. And I'm going to give this guy the possibility.
 
(Q) : Are you familiar with singularity?
 
(Antonio Banderas) : I am familiar now. It's a concept that-
 
(Q) : Kurzweil.
 
(Antonio Banderas): Yes. Yes. And Asimov, of course. Which is, in a way, inserted in that.
 
(Q) : Will it be in Spanish or English?
 
(Antonio Banderas): It will be in English. It will be in English because the budget of the movie is one of those movies that we have to presell in order to make it. And if we don't make it in English it's almost impossible.
 
(Q) : Will Elena be in it, as well?

(Antonio Banderas): No. Somewhere it has published that she was going to be but she's not going to be. And I would like to direct Elena.
 
(Q) : How is it for you to go back to a Spanish language film like this?
 
(Antonio Banderas): It was kind of relaxing. I didn't have to establish so much. But man going back to Almodovar just, you know, balanced the whole thing. Because he's tough enough. In a very good way.
 
(Q) : You'll have to be curating more film series, too.
 
(Antonio Banderas) : It's true. It's true.

 

End.