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 Both Elena and Diego then discover that he has withdrawn from both while simultaneously trying to placate them.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