Almodovar's "horror movie"

Pedro Almodovar, who's spent the last decade or so alternating between arthouse-inflected High Camp and arthouse-inflected Douglas Sirk riffs, has made what he calls "a horror story without screams of frights": "The Skin I Live In." And now we have a trailer (or, rather, a Cannes clip):



The "horror" part makes a little more sense once you know that Antonio Banderas is supposed to be playing a mad scientist who's experimenting on a captive woman (women?) to create indestructible skin for his wife; who was horribly burned in a car crash. It's based (very, very loosely) on the novel "Tarantula" by Theirry Jonquet.

Anyone who has seen more than one entry in the alarming wide canon of "mad-doc-ostensibly-trying-to-help-injured-wife" genre are requested to at least act surprised when said mad doctor's beautiful, fiercely-devoted assistant/doormat complicates matters by developing romantic feelings for him. All told, it sounds very similar to "Eyes Without a Face;" which American horror fans may be more familiar with as "The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus:"



Nobody has seen this yet, but it's set to debut at Cannes.