Skin I Live In

1085 Words5 Pages
One formal element in The Skin I Live In is the framing of the film. The film included a multitude of close-up shots of the characters’ faces. The film would pan into Vera’s face as she stares into the security camera or Robert’s face as he is about to tranquilize Vicente. The purpose of the close-up shots in a narrative is to emphasis the character’s intense mood or thought. That emphasis gives the viewer a clue about what is going to happen next in the film. In the case of the Robert’s example, the close-up shot showed Robert and his determined anger, which makes the audience believe that he is going to exact revenge onto Vicente. A parallelism that can be seen in the film is Robert’s and Vera’s dream flashbacks. The film pans into Robert…show more content…
A story element in The Skin I Live In is Norma committing suicide by jumping out of the window. This scene is not explicitly shown in the film but is assumed through Marilla, when she tells Vera that Norma died the same way her mother did. Another story element is Cristina keeping her promise to Vicente that, if he were to leave, she would stay with his mother. The film does not show Cristina working with his mother while Vicente is kidnapped but we she that she is still working at the store at the end of the film. Through this, the audience can assume that Cristina stayed. Plot is the explicit events that occur in the film. For example, a plot element is Robert performing a sex change surgery on Vicente. Another element is Robert killing Zeca after he rapes…show more content…
Sigmund Freud developed the theory of Scopophilia or the pleasure in looking (Mulvey, pg. 9). In cinema, women are displayed as the image in which others gain pleasure from looking, while men are the bearer of the look (Mulvey, pg. 11). This states that men actively look and act on their desires while women are the object that is looked at. This description of women presents a problem when combined with Freud’s castration anxiety. Castration anxiety is the idea that women are castrated men and the presence of women terrifies males as they remind males that they too can be without a penis (Mulvery, pg. 13). Scopophilia is a response to that anxiety. Mulvery breaks scopophilia into two types, fetishistic and sadistic scopophilia (Mulvery, pg.
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