Jeffrey Dean Morgan co-stars in Sebastián Gutiérrez's sensual thriller about a group of people being held hostage by diamond thieves in a mansion on a remote Mexican beach.
At a time when so many crime thrillers tend to be dark, gritty, and prestige-minded, Peacock's Leopard Skin stands out as being none of those things. While its setup sounds typical enough for the genre - a botched heist, terrified hostages, secrets, showdowns, and betrayal - its execution proves to be anything but.
Creator: Sebastian Gutierrez
Stars: Carla Gugino, Ana de la Reguera, Gaite Jansen
Created, written, and directed by Sebastián Gutiérrez (Jett), this series dances backwards and forwards in time, taking leisurely detours down semi-random rabbit holes and flights of fancy. He rarely misses an opportunity to admire the beauty of the (frequently nude) female form, or to connect with the crackling tension, amorous or not, that runs between his characters. It's outwardly a drama, but it's packed with weird jokes.
All of these excesses are held together not with a watertight plot, but through a hazy dream logic that feels downright opaque at times. As such, what it consists of, in the end, is hard to say. As an immediate experience, however, its strangeness makes it intermittently and unexpectedly hypnotic: a series of mysterious but eerie pleasures, broken into manageable half-hour chunks.
Plot-wise, Leopard Skin kicks off with such force that initially, we don't even know what we don't know. The premiere quickly introduces Alba (a mesmerizing Carla Gugino) and Batty (Gaite Jansen), two beautiful women strolling through a spacious mansion on a remote Mexican beach. But there's barely time to wonder if they're lovers, roommates, or something more before a trio of armed mercenaries (Gentry White's Malone, Margot Bingham's Clover, and Nora Arnezeder's Sierra) have made their way looking for a place to hide while recover from a job that turned sour.
The eight-episode season charts the situation as it spirals out of control from there. Unsuspecting guests, including the rude documentarian Max (Philip Winchester), his perky young girlfriend Maru (Amelia Eve), and the house's former housekeeper, Inocencia (Ana de la Reguera), find themselves drawn into the fray. Meanwhile, the crooks fight to gain the upper hand on their boss, corrupt Miami judge LaSalle (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). Escape attempts are made, betrayals are considered, and everyone realizes that the best they can hope for from the situation might just be to get out alive.
But the real meat of Leopard Skin lies in the hopelessly tangled web of desires, jealousies, and enmities that weave its characters together, some stretching back months or years. Gutiérrez invites us to delve into the most intimate psyche of these people, from their darkest and most intrusive thoughts to the stories they tell about themselves. Many of the details we're given approach Wes Anderson levels of wackiness: of course, Batty's failed careers include "underwater explorer" and "human mannequin," because that's the kind of story it is.
Which is to say that Leopard Skin has no interest in trying to capture the way real people behave, dress, or talk. Gugino seems particularly suited to the fantasy Gutiérrez has built around her, with her honey-smoky voice and her larger-than-life presence. These characters strut through their lavish homes in jewel-toned silks and skyscraper heels, speaking in the purple prose and stiff cadences of a stylized crime novel or vulgar soap opera. Sometimes in dream sequences they don't speak at all, but communicate psychically. Left alone in a house for the night, a woman pinches her own nipples while she squirts cum down her throat, for the sheer pleasure of it.
It's goofy, weird, and weirdly sexy, which is Leopard Skin territory. This is not a show that tries to look away, or tries to act like she's not turned on by what she's seeing. Instead, it's lighthearted and extravagant in its bawdyness, relishing shots of elaborately choreographed love scenes and naked bodies lounging by pools or writhing in beds. If Gutiérrez's half-hearted attempts to throw a feminist gloss on this whole (mostly female) nudity thing are rarely convincing, he has a much more solid understanding of the psychological and emotional depths that lurk beneath their most torrid relationship. He knows how to shoot a sex scene, but he also knows when the sexiest thing about a sex scene is the constant eye contact between characters whose kinky dynamics have been teased and abused.