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El Engaño De La Piel: La Transmutación Alquímica Del Sujeto Transexual En “La Piel Que Habito”, Antonia Delgado-Poust

Modern Languages and Literatures Articles

This article considers the creative and transformative process undergone by the main protagonist –a transsexual- of La piel que habito (2011) while comparing it to the age-old alchemical process, as the two share a common objective: the perfection, imitation, and adulteration –or falsification- of nature. The main purpose of this essay, aside from delineating the alchemical motifs present throughout the film, is to explore the (con)fusion of a particular set of binaries, such as the authentic and the artificial, the masculine and the feminine, and the Self and the Other. The author maintains that, as with alchemy, Almodóvar presents the …