MovieChat Forums > La piel que habito (2011) Discussion > Medical question (huge spoiler, if you d...

Medical question (huge spoiler, if you didn't see it RUN YOU FOOL!!)

posted 12 years ago by dariopy
18 replies | jump to latest

Ok so Robert was a great... plastic surgeon? molecular biologist? whatever. Let's say he had the skill and technical prowess to do the sex change (kind of simple nowadays) and even the seemingly perfect face transplant (orders of magnitude more difficult in this day an age. Though now I think about, it could have been not a face transplant but plain old plastic surgery, but I digress), but were the physionomic changes addressed at all by the plot?

I grant that Vicente was short and kind of "delicate" but there is still a MALE SKELETON there beneath that skin... you know, wide shoulders, thin hips, marked eyebrow arcs, etc. Is there any possible explanation for Vera to have such a gorgeous feminine body, or is it just artistic license?

[–] elleveutlecoq 12 years ago

Well I think there wasn't a face transplant but I robert subconsciously formed vincentes face through plastic surgery like that of his wife.

You're right about the male skeleton which remains unaffected by hormones after puberty but fat gets redistributed by hrt in a typical feminie patter, muscles atrophy so that shoulds might get a bit narrower and then thereare implants. But when we look at the actors of vincente and vera I think it is still impossible to get such a perfect outcome.

But there can be quite astonishing results when you look at this: http://s7.directupload.net/file/d/2834/5vyxifcv_jpg.htm

You just can't make one person look exactly like another.

[–] xxxsweetleafxxx 12 years ago

Have you seriously not seen how gorgeous a lot of male to female transsexuals can be?

Often times you can not tell the difference. However, the voice was way too feminine.

[–] Overmarz87 12 years ago

I've seen some hot trannies but I don't think you could ever get results like vera. There's always some feature on a tranny(not a cock) that tips me off.

Those trannies in elle's picture all have big hands. Check out the one gripping that budweiser.

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[–] elleveutlecoq 12 years ago

The collage shows the same person in different stages of transition.

[–] Korios 10 years ago

The limiting factor is the bones; these cannot be decreased by plastic surgery. They could theoretically be sculpted by nanobots or some osteine dissolving molecule, but I do not think they had the tech to go that far, this would be too sci-fi. However I personally buy the transformation, realizing that it was the product of a quite flexible artistic license.

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[–] TheManInOil 12 years ago

There's no real 'science' to this story. It's just a device.

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[–] jerry4444 12 years ago

Maybe he achieved such a perfection after working on it for more than 4 years?

[–] elleveutlecoq 12 years ago

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m50rojDSk11rx5tjeo1_500.jpg

[–] theluckdog 12 years ago

Completely possible to make an insanely sexy female out of a 20-something male body .... you do it as a movie 7 use 2 different actors/actresses. Easy.

[–] agnieszka01 12 years ago

Vicente was a twink, not a bear. They weren't taking such huge liberties there.

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[–] ephemereality 12 years ago

Well, you CAN shape the human skeleton and still leave it functional but I do think it was just artistic freedom being taken. They probably focused on finding two actors with great skill that first of all had a facial structure that were similar. It is also notable that Vicente was apparently rather short for a man as well, so I think Almódar did put a lot of effort into finding the right actor for the role as Vicente, but of cuorse, he still had to take liberties at the end of the day.

[–] foghillcafe 10 years ago

With an unlimited amount of surgery, estrogen, anti-androgens and the right equipment, you could do something pretty similar to this...

There's actually less difference than you might think between a man and a woman than you'd think. They chose a short man with a delicate frame; that alone makes the transition very believable.

Muscle loss over those years alone, with anti-androgens and estrogen without any surgery at all would make him very femiine (plenty of transexual women would never be noticed unless someone pointed them out).

The difficulties from a surgical point of view that I see is making the shoulders less wide and reducing the size of the torso. The first could in theory be done, the shoulders are not that wide (but not by a surgeon like him), but reducing the size of the Torso would be a major endeavour at the frontier of medecine because its mostly useless to anyone (nobody would think of trying it).

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ph75006 9 years ago

I don't remember the film addressing the plethora of other elements that would be necessary for the sexual transformation to reach that level of change. You're right to say that Robert would also have to put Vincent through extensive hormone therapy, resculpt other parts of his skeletal frame, etc. It is possible to achieve such a feminine appearance if the original skeletal frame wasn't that large. Like others have already mentioned, Vincent wasn't some big, muscular hunk of a man. He was a young, thin, somewhat feminine guy to begin with. I myself have seen some trannies who'd easily pass for very pretty girls, especially in southeast Asian countries where the people have smaller skeletal builds (just check out Thailand...I actually know someone in real-life who has been saving up money for a sex change in Thailand b/c he heard it was the best place to do it. Don't know if he actually went through with it or if he was successful but I like to tell myself that it was and that he's much happier now).