There's male. There's female. There's Hitchcock.There's Sirk. More importantly, & to the point, there's Almodovar. "The Skin I live in". That sounds a tad simplistic. But it's all justified & true. Banderas gives his A-game for Pedro like always, & astonishing Elena Anaya, embodying the interiors with her exteriors, versa to the vice of the film!
The 'Almodovar genre'. Don't pay attention to 'Sci-fi', not that he is going to embrace that aspect. Or maybe that's what Almodovar is set to do. The respect for physical & sexual in meta- terms, without particularly asphyxiating the power of singular identity, all done in psychological plane. The plain abstractness of mis-en-scene, but also loud expository expressionism in Vincente/Vera, done with suitable melancholy. It seems that the direction & writing is saddled with PA's concerns of the scientific sleight-of-hand being an active distraction. But one could never take the Hitchcock out of the man, that he sets out of to do two different halves with each having its own tonal qualities, the element of suspense & mystery of the unknown, and especially for this film, it's all very organic. You could borrow a pair of scissors from Antonio Banderas and incisively cut across the second act of the film, and you have it all surgically bifurcated.