Review of In My Skin (2002) by Richard S — 05 Nov 2007

An interesting, at times brilliant, but ultimately flawed exploration of the alienation a person can feel towards their own body.

It has to be said up front that this is not a film for everybody featuring some of the most wince-inducing scenes ever committed to film. I'm pretty hardened but it's not often I watch half a film through my fingers. But there again how many films feature blood-letting, self-mutilation and auto-cannibalism. Unfortunately a lot of people seem to have got caught up with the self-mutilation aspect of the film; it's not about the pathological states attendant on self-mutilation. Instead the premise is simple that a woman is involved in a nasty accident but she doesn't notice suggesting that she has in some way become emotionally or perceptually detached from her own body. This throws up a variety of existential and phenomenological problems which she tries to solve or at least explore through acts of self-mutilation. In other words how do I feel, and what is this thing (body) that's simultaneously immanent and dislocated. By entering into an invasive physical relationship with her body she attempts to find some sort of understanding.

The film then tries to develop the pathology in a number of different ways: a compulsiveness to harm under extreme social distress - closest to self-cutting per se; as a way of confronting, or escaping or solving alienation in moments of social absurdity/artificiality (this throws up the best scene in the film: the dinner scene); and finally entering into a sensual erotic relationship with one's body as something separate to the self, i.e., as something that can be objectively loved - albeit in a very bizarre way.

De Van obviously highlights that this final, sensual, erotic phase - possibly induced by the initial taboo of the act of self-mutilation - would run alongside a complete destructive breakdown. And this is the narrative arc of the film.

The main problem with the film is that it is so ideas heavy, it is very hard for the film to properly deal the complicated philosophy and the deeply complex pathology being invoked. And then add to this the fact that you're being asked to consider such delicate questions whilst watching a woman eat herself and it's difficult to know what the scope of the film really is. It's just too queasy.

That said it's bold as hell, and essential for any one interested in extreme cinema. It's also much better than Clare Denis' film "Trouble Everyday" which deals with the same sort of territory but which is truly god awful.