The Skin I Live In – Update (Spoiler, and Trigger Alert)

In a post yesterday on The Parallax View and The Skin I Live In, I wrote

Briefly, because I haven’t finished watching the one yet. Spoiler, I guess. There’s a rape (maybe more: I’ll edit the post accordingly when I finish the movie).

There’s definitely another one, but the less said about it before you’ve seen the movie yourself, the better.

–

It’s not the most extraordinary gif ever made, but it is my first. Here’s a scene from last night’s viewing of The Skin I Live In, and, if you’re curious, the answer to this fellow’s uncertainty is yes, you definitely did rape her. She was semi-catatonic from psychotropic drugs, and you were high on whatever, but, yes, it was rape. And now, in the tradition of mad scientist films, our young man will suffer revenge of the strangest sort.

Incidentally, some years ago, when I was a young man in my mid to late 30s, I routinely sneered at those sad enough to be worried about plot spoilers. Plot didn’t matter, as I argued to anyone unfortunate enough to know me. What mattered was what was done with our tiny set of possibilities. Like most know-it-alls, I thought the human race was through. We could keep busy in a couple of ways, but we all knew the doom that waited for us.

PLOT SPOILER, we’re all gonna die! In a couple generations you will be forgotten. Our species has doomed itself. PLOT SPOILER!

To this doddering young man, I say: stop plaguing us, close Save the Cat, put the Stith Thompson back under the wobbly table leg, and try to find something more surprising. There’s cause for hope if you shut up and try to find something better.

Like, say, Almodóvar’s mad scientist film.

And do yourself the favor of reading this excellent review, which observes

Trans people seeing it might be either repulsed, angry, think it’s a big hoot or feel hugely empathic towards it as a work of art. In my case it was all of the above.