Second Skin

How different this could have been if the spirit of the opening titles (big music and a Bond riff, but with a male torso doing the twist) had been maintained. Instead we get a cod psychological drama about a perfect couple going off the rails because he's having an affair - with a man (Bardem, as a young surgeon). A lesser addition to Spanish cinema's recent forays into gay affairs, the film sports a reasonable absence of sheets in the bed scenes, counterbalanced by lack in almost all other departments. There's no sense of place or the play of time, and with the psychological focus on this stressed triangle passing from one to another faster than a plate of dodgy tapas, would-be character 'complexity' comes over simply as structural confusion. Husband Alberto's fluctuations of denial and excess are woefully played.