Cannes 2011: Chilling stills from The Skin I Live In

[UPDATE: Sorry the photo database for this gallery is broken at the moment, but you can find the complete gallery reconstructed here. Apologies for the inconvenience.]

Path√© has released more unsettling stills from Pedro Almodovar’s horror thriller The Skin I Live In. JoBlo.com has this roughly-translated synopsis:

Since his wife perished burnt in a car crash, Dr Ledgard (Antonio Banderas), a well respected plastic surgeon, gets interested in the creation of a new type of skin that could have saved his wife. Twelve years later he succeeds in cultivating it at his lab, taking advantage in the advance made on cellular therapy. To get to his goal he doesn’t doubt in trespassing the ethical limit of the transgenesis with human beings. But this will not be the only crime he will commit‚Ä¶

More after the cut, including a NSFW full-size view of the cropped shot above. Even more disturbing are descriptions of the novel on which the film is loosely based, Thierry Jonquet’s Tarantula — summaries which may spill major spoilers so don’t read them if you want to wait to be shocked.

SPOILERS From the US edition: “Richard Lafargue, a well-known plastic surgeon, pursues and captures Vincent Moreau, who raped Lafargue‚Äôs daughter and left her hopelessly mad in an asylum. Lafargue is determined to exact an atrocious vengeance, and an ambiguous, even sadomasochistic relationship develops between self-appointed executioner and victim.”

SPOILERS From the UK edition: “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. Lafargue humiliates Eve by forcing her to perform lewd sexual acts with strangers while he watches through a one-way mirror.