Just in time for its imminent debut in competition at Cannes, a brief teaser trailer for **The Skin I Live In ** has escaped online.
Heralding the much-anticipated reunion of Pedro Almodovar and Antonio Banderas - their sixth collaboration, but the first time they've worked together since Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! twenty years ago - it's not a trailer that reveals a great deal. Hence "teaser", we suppose.
A feisty leotarded and masked woman (Elena Anaya, who payed Sofia in Mesrine) makes a break for it from the fortress-like home in which she's seemingly a prisoner. She doesn't make it. Banderas, her apparent jailer, seems unconcerned at her threats.
But if you know the source novel, Thierry Jonquet's scurrilous Mygale (published in English as Tarantula), you'll recognise the set-up, which involves a plastic surgeon with a revolutionary new technique, a need for a human guinea pig, and a revenge plan that involves captivity and sexual humiliation...
How closely Almodovar has adhered to his source remains to be seen, but The Skin I Live In is, he says "The harshest thing I've ever written... close to the terror genre, but not respecting any of its rules." It's out in the UK on August 26.