“Sancho: You’re aiming at your superior!
David: No, I’m aiming at a lunatic and a drunk!”

‘Live Flesh’, directed by Pedro Almodóvar in 1997, is a Spanish adaptation of Ruth Rendell’s 1986 psychological thriller. In Madrid in 1970, a prostitute gives birth to a boy whilst on a bus. In 1990, the boy is now a young man who is dating (or trying to date) a drug addict called Elena. One night they have an altercation which leads to the police being called and, tragically, one of the cops being wounded and paralysed. Victor goes to jail, and on release he begins inveigle his way into Elena’s life. Elena has by now married the paralysed former cop who has now become a national wheelchair basketball star. Over the course of the film, Victor and the cop play cat-and-mouse, the former trying to convince the latter that he wasn’t responsible for the gunshot. It’s a twisted psychological thriller with the feeling of heightened reality you get with Almodóvar’s movies. There is also the same mixture of underworld characters from drug dealers to prostitutes familiar from movies such as ‘All About My Mother’. Here though, the nature of the adaptation means that the plot is more tightly wrought than in other films, there’s less of Almodóvar’s free-wheeling storytelling. It most closely resembles ‘Kika’, but without the comedy. In general this isn’t his best: it is elegantly put together and impressively performed but lacks some of the outrageous twists or excesses that makes Almodóvar so compelling.

Would I recommend it? Yes – but only after watching ‘All About My Mother’.