A good movie

Since it had been years the last time I saw a movie directed by Pedro Almodovar, I was really eager to see this one, especially since it had received some stellar reviews. Well, I wasn't disappointed as it was easily his best movie in years. Indeed, it was a fascinating tale and the Spanish master delivered here a really strong thriller. On top of that, after 20 long years, he was working again with Antonio Banderas who gave here one of his best performances. Unfortunately, even though the whole thing really had the potential to be a real masterpiece, it still didn't completely worked, I'm afraid. First of all, I was worried when this guy in tiger suit showed up. Seriously, this character came from nowhere and he was basically one of these typical obnoxious characters that are a trademark in Almodovar's work. Fortunately, he was killed off within the next 10 minutes. Then, I also struggled with the daugther. I mean, she was supposed to be a major drive behind the main character's actions but she was actually poorly developed and reduced to a rather pathetic mental case. Finally, even though the story was quite powerful and already pretty messed-up, which is rather usual with this director, they still felt the need to go for a really random structure which wasn't really interesting after all. In fact, it wasn't only the structure, the whole thing was actually pretty random. For example, the way Marilia tells that she is Zeca's mother but also Robert's mother came out from nowhere, it didn't add much to the whole thing and why on Earth would she tell this to Vera? Anyway, in spite of its flaws, it was still a fascinating thriller, a really original take on the Frankenstein tale, and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Almodovar's work. 

7/10