Antonio Banderas is out on a very polarized and complicated press tour at the moment. While it is not uncommon for an actor to have several projects opening at the same time, there have perhaps never been two more diametrically opposed films opening together than Puss in Boots, a feature-length spinoff of Banderas’ scene-stealing feline fan favorite from the Shrek films, and The Skin I Live In, a shockingly perverse psychological drama that reunites Banderas, now 51, with the great Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar, who first introduced Banderas in such ’80s world cinema classics as Law of Desire and Women on the Verge of Nervous Breakdown. And so, when Banderas and his frequent collaborator/Puss in Boots co-star Salma Hayek came to San Francisco for a red carpet premiere of their film, we were supposed to be talking about the family-friendly Puss in Boots. But, inevitably, the conversation kept working its way back to his other, considerably more lurid project – whether he liked it or not.
