Second Skin (2000)

Excellent acting elevates Second Skin to earnest heights of heartfelt melodrama in contemporary Madrid. It's a Spanish soap opera in the most intelligent sense, inviting comparison to the intimate passion plays of Pedro Almódovar and Eric Rohmer. Director Gerardo Vera's approach is more conventional, despite the fact that this modest tale of marital discord involves an unhappy wife, Elena (Ariadna Gil), whose suspicions are only slightly mistaken. Instead of another woman, her husband Alberto (Jordi Mollà) is having an affair with Diego (Javier Bardem, from Before Night Falls). He's tormented by his genuine love for his wife, child, and gay lover, and his inability to choose between them. Unfortunately, the screenplay decides for him, resorting to a last-minute twist of fate to resolve the dilemma that Alberto couldn't solve on his own. It's a cop-out solution, more suited to bad cable TV, weakening an otherwise honest and emotionally involving film. Recommended, with minor reservations. --Jeff Shannon Amazon.com

Watch the movie for the AMAZING performances

Adriadna Gil, Jordi Molla and Javier Bardem are simply phenomenal in this film. The characters all have such depth that you can live through their emotions through each one of the scenes. The movie is about Alberto (Molla) (No somos nadie), a married man who struggles with his homosexuality. Molla plays perfectly his role as the tortured man unable to deal with his homosexuality. His lies become a torture to him and, although his may want to be with his family, he continues his affair with Diego. His inability to follow the social norm is eating him inside and Alberto, although you may despise him for the cheating and the lying, makes you feel sorry for him at times. Molla truly carries this film.

Diego, his lover, does not know that Alberto is married and has a son, and in his desire to be with Alberto puts his career on the line. Bardem is simply phenomenal in this role; he is both genuine and compelling. Gil, who play Elena, is the dutiful wife who tries to come to terms with her husband's infidelity and homosexuality and rebels when she can no longer tolerate what is happening.

Gil (Lagrimas Negras: Black Tears) is amazing in her performance as the wife who tries to forgive her husband but is unable to. She lashes out, she rebels, she suffers and she tries to come to terms with the choices she makes.

Cecilia Roth (All About My Mother), an amazing actress, is merely fluff in this movie. She is given a secondary role who's only purpose is to relegate to the audience that Alberto is not a trustworthy man and that Diego is putting his career on the line. This is truly a pity because that was a waste of her talent.

I gave this film 3 stars because, although the character development is amazing, the plot seems to hurried and forced. The movie fell flat at times and the only thing carrying it forward were the amazing performances.

For those of you that want this info: This is not a movie for children, it has several steamy sex scenes (excellently made), both gay and straight.
April 29, 2008

sad.... really wonderfully sad

I found this movie had a really sad feel about it, from the opening credits through to the sad ending. It tugs at your emotions throughout and you cant help but feel sorry for each of the three main characters, even the son, who has only a minor part. Though the movie's colouring is bright and locations and people are all beautiful, this cannot distract from the fact that no good can surely come from this relationship, a feeling of pending doom and underlying hysteria is always there. I thought it well acted. Even though most did not like the ending, i felt it kept with the theme of the movie (sad). Highly recommended as a tragic love story for those who like to shed a tear for a love that could never be.

Richard May 30, 2007

Excellent actors, very real

Didn't give 5 stars because of the ending wich I didn't like(won't tell you how it ends!)
It worths to be seen,great erotic scenes, great love story July 2, 2006

A MAN TORN IN TWO...........(or: J&J Burn Up the Screen)

****

(Torn between the life society forces one to live and the life one needs live...........)

How utterly devastating for lead character, Alberto, as for any of us, to face the realization that everything he's done in life (carrying on a family work tradition, courting and marrying, parenting) is NOT who he really is. A third generation (grandfather, father before him) airport operations worker, and husband / father......these are all roles in life which have been 'expected' of him, all roles in which he's truly tried to give his best. In the end, all that trying might not prove to be enough. But would even finding the "love of his life" (Javier Bardem's Diego) prove enough? He'd thought....hoped....it would. After all, it is this man whom he's told in so many words: "I think this time with you has been the best in my life."

Yet, can someone truly successfully live a double life? Alberto is faced with answering this quandary upon Elena's discovery of his outside-their-marriage activities. In seeking the answer, will he find his feelings for Elena prove the greater or will he find their life together has been based on only what was expected of him (expectations......expectations, meeting them can tear you apart)? To compound his conflict, at the near conclusion of everything, when Diego says: "you have to start over......," you can plainly see the realization in Jordi Molla's oh-so-expressive eyes and face (this man is so beautiful), that his quandary has just been pushed beyond the level of human endurance.

FINAL RESTATEMENT: In the end, then, we can see we have been given the study of a man raised and pushed into being something he isn't. It's the story of oh, so many out there. Some are able to break the mold, others not---the strength of commitments (to spouse, to children, family) being too great. Or perhaps that's the excuse used for staying within the mold. But in the hearts and minds of those who do stay, the longings---those yearnings for "the other"---are there.......always there.......and they hurt. Alberto might be able to break from the mold, but to what point? Only viewing this film, dear reader, will provide you the answer.

(A word of warning to those possibly offended by scenes of male love-making. In the "Unrated' version, they are intense)

PS---Many aspects of this Spanish film pre-sage ones in America's later released "Brokeback Mountain" (2005). Was Ennis's conflict any more soul-wrenching than Alberto's? Yes, Ennis is much the simpler man, but over and above that, when it comes to the love of your life, does it really matter where in this world you find that love (out-of-the-way ranch town or bustling city.......lofty urban areas or soaring mountains)?

****
June 15, 2006

Javier Bardem is once again amazing in this film.

After viewing this the other day I find it intriguing. This film consist of an married couple and a male lover, only this time it's not the wife but the husband who's cheating with another man. Some of the scenes made me cringed a speck. Though, it is a bit TV plot based on a true story, and it has rarely been seen on cinema, doesn't necessarily mean that it cannot be done. In fact, the quality that makes this particular movie a good piece of art is that it portrayed as a good archetype of a modern life situation that happen to occur more often than one could suspect.

The husband's unwillingness and incapableness to find his true nature, constantly lying to his wife and his lover, has driven those last characters to despair in understanding and helping the man they love but who they don't know. The wife never suspected that her lack of involvement in their relationship could endanger her marriage at the point of seeing her husband seeking for an affair. As for the gay lover, the fact that his present companion has afraid to be seen in public with him, like two lovers rather than two friends, hurts him badly because he accepts his own nature. The intriguing excuses of Alberto, the husband, makes them reacting towards him trying to solve the puzzle that he consists, when the easy way out of the situation is right near them (like when the wife cannot enjoy being with another man when she has the opportunity or the lover won't accept his female colleague to help getting over him). Three persons portrayed in their interior (the opening credits with the x-rays is one of the most beautiful openings I've seen lately) with their emotions thickening as the film passes.

The players of this movie are excellent, particularly Ariadna Gil, the wife. What disappointed me were the last fifteen minutes in which seems that the writer and director of this movie were replaced by others who didn't know what was done before, leaving the ending so pathetic and inconclusive.

I had read that this film has caused a lot of controversy in Spain. It is establishing a trend in Spanish films exploiting gay themes by casting some of the country's most popular male stars as lovers to lure viewers, therefore appealing to voyeurism. This "gayploitation" has been going on for over a decade in Spanish cinema. In fact, it's hard to name an established Spanish actor who hasn't appeared in at least one gay role. However, in most cases, these roles or their sexuality have been secondary. Whether this film is voyeuristic or not is certainly up to the viewer to decide. Still, it is worth a watch.
April 2, 2006

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