Second
Skin (Segunda Piel) is the second Spanish
film this year to focus on bisexuality. Unlike the more lighthearted
I Will Survive
(Sobreviviré), the plot in Second
Skin is tragic throughout. Alberto (played by Jordi
Mollá) is an aeronautics engineer who has inherited
a thriving business from his father; in time, we learn that
he was a spoiled child, accustomed to getting his way in personal
matters, though also forced to follow a certain career path.
He met attractive Elena (played by Ariadna Gil) at college,
married her, and they have an adorable son who is about seven
years old. She works at a printery. Although Alberto is affectionate
at home when the movie begins, Elena misses the sexual satisfaction
of the early years of their marriage. Alberto cannot offer
her any consolation, let alone bedroom excitement, despite
her efforts to buy sexy clothes and make passionate advances.
The real reason, which Alberto does not disclose to her, is
that he is carrying on a love affair with Diego (played by
Javier Bardem), a gay orthopedic surgeon who fixed his arm
and now submits to Alberto’s dominant sexual appetite.
He, thus, is torn between two people who want to love him,
and he negotiates his double life with lies. During the opening
scene, Elena finds a receipt for a hotel visit that has been
separated from a business suit by a dry cleaning establishment,
and the duplicity starts unraveling. Alberto tries to salvage
his marriage by telling Elena that his affair has no significance,
and he tries to drop Diego, who continues to press him to
continue their relationship. While Diego and Elena want to
resolve the matter honestly with Alberto, the tendencies within
him are unresolved, so he cannot fully satisfy either of the
loves of his life. The film shows how Alberto’s irresolution
progressively destroys the ability of all three to carry on
normally at home and at work. Although Diego’s assistant
Eva (played by Cecilia Roth) advises him to drop Alberto,
she fails to understand the emotional depth in the relationship
that the two men have for each other, a romantic obsession
that is unfathomable to the straight characters in the movie.
Due to the tension at home, Elena moves out, then later returns
home. Next, Alberto moves out to an apartment of his own,
thus not with Diego. Both Elena and Diego then discover that
he has withdrawn from both while simultaneously trying to
placate them. In due course Alberto breaks down in tears with
both, saying that he needs help. The key line is "If
I’m not Alberto, then who am I?" When Alberto learns
that Elena and Diego have met briefly to discuss him, he can
no longer lead a double life, and filmviewers who have expected
that there can be no happy ending will leave the cinema saddened
that the forlorn Alberto lacked a bisexual support group to
provide counsel and to assist in strengthening his identity.
The fragmentation of Alberto’s life into work and two
separate love affairs, bottled up in watertight compartments,
has produced what appears to be a classic case of schizophrenic
paranoia, which 20 percent of the time results in suicide.
In the United States, where bisexuality is unacknowledged
as an option and either mainstream heterosexuality or gay
life are cultural alternatives, the true bisexual should learn
from the character of Alberto that a split life to cope with
uncontrollable inborn impulses is psychologically perilous.
Gerard Vera, the director and screenwriter Gerard Vera of
Second Skin, portrays semiautobiographically
how gays and straights who suffer emotional disappointments
end up psychologically shipwrecked, whereas a bisexual person
who does not know where to turn ultimately suffers the most.
MH
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