Antonio Banderas is now set to star in director Pedro Almodovar's (Talk to Her, Volver) next film, La Piel que Habito (Spanish for The Skin I Live In). THR reports that Banderas will team up with the famed Spanish director for the first time in 20 years to play “a plastic surgeon looking for revenge on the man who raped his daughter“
The film, which will shoot this summer in Spain, will be an adaptation of Thierry Jonquet's novel, Tarantula. You can read the synopsis for the novel after the jump along with some quotes from Almodovar on the project and why we might be seeing some more collaborations between him and Penelope Cruz in the near future.
Almodovar recently spoke with the Spanish newspaper, El Pais, and had this to say about the film:
"The film will be a terror film, without screams or scares. It's difficult to define and although it comes close to the terror genre -- something that appeals to me that I've never done -- I won't respect any of its rules. It's the harshest film I've ever written and Banderas' character is brutal."
When asked about the absence of his muse Penelope Cruz, the director responded with:
"As the story has developed, I don't see her in that role. But that's not a problem because I'm going to continue seeing her in other roles. I have a lot of stories I want to shoot. Without going any further, I have four scripts in development in my drawer."
Pedro Almodovar is, in my opinion, one the greatest directors working today. I will continue to anticipate anything that he makes no matter what. Having said that, I’m very interested in seeing what he can do with a “revenge film”. It’s also nice knowing that there are no signs of him slowing down anytime soon.
If you want to know a bit more about La Piel que Habito’s plot, here is the synopsis for the novel Tarantula by Thierry Jonquet
“Richard Lafargue is an eminent plastic surgeon haunted by dirty secrets. He has an operating theatre in the basement of his chateau and keeps his partner Eve imprisoned in her bedroom, a room he has equipped with an intercom and 300-watt speakers through which he bellows orders. Eve is only allowed out to be paraded at cocktail parties and on the last Sunday of each month, when the couple visit a young woman in a mental asylum. Following these outings, Lafargue humiliates Eve by forcing her to perform lewd sexual acts with strangers while he watches through a one-way mirror. In alternating chapters, Jonquet introduces seemingly unrelated characters ? a criminal on the run after murdering a policeman, and an abducted young man who finds himself chained naked in a dark chamber, forced to endure all manner of physical torture at the hands of a mysterious stranger, whom he calls “Mygale”, after a type of tropical spider. All of these characters are caught in a deceitful web, doomed to meet their fate.”
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