Tocka

In my Skin by Marina de Van
screening

 

PLOT SINOPSIS

Marina de Van, a frequent collaborator of director François Ozon's (she co-wrote several films with him, in addition to starring in See the Sea and Sitcom), makes her feature directorial debut with In My Skin, which she also wrote. De Van stars in the film as Esther, a self-conscious young woman who works for a public relations firm. Her life seems to be going well. Her boyfriend, Vincent (Laurent Lucas of With a Friend Like Harry...), wants to live with her. At work, she's in line for a promotion and the opportunity to run a prestigious campaign for a jewelry company. One night at a party with her friend, Sandrine (Léa Drucker), Esther wanders into the backyard and stumbles, scratching her leg on a piece of scrap metal. She goes back to the party, and later realizes that her injury is much more severe than she had thought. There's a huge, ugly gouge all the way up her shin, and she's bleeding profusely. She goes to a doctor, who patches her up and tells her she might need a skin graft. But Esther becomes obsessed with the wound. She won't let it heal, sneaking away during work to cut herself. As her leg becomes an ugly scarred mass, she begins to notice a problem with her arm. Before long, she's alienated Vincent and jeopardized her job with her compulsive, self-destructive behavior. But she continues on her grotesque downward spiral. In My Skin was shown at Lincoln Center in New York as part of their 2003 Rendez-vous with French Cinema.
 

REVIEW

Raw as an open wound, Marina de Van's debut feature, In My Skin is a disturbing, self-obsessed psychological horror film. The director, who also stars in the film as the afflicted Esther, slowly and subtly builds a sense of unease to tension and dread. De Van literalizes a connection between material success and unhealthy self-image that leads to disaster. In My Skin seems to be as much about Esther's probing discontent with her values as it is about her uneasy relationship with her own body. This is brought to the fore in a supremely uncomfortable and darkly comic scene in which Esther tries to control her self-mutilating compulsion during a fancy dinner with important clients. She loses interest in the banal chatter of the clients when she imagines her left arm has detached itself from her body and is lying limp next to her plate. Pulling it under the table, she proceeds to surreptitiously violate the misbehaving limb with a fork, before awkwardly excusing herself. De Van uses some restraint in the early going. She achieves a ghastly effectiveness using sound effects and a good deal of grotesque, but not bloody, body imagery. As Esther slips deeper into madness, restraint is thrown out the window and the film becomes a bloody mess. De Van makes her points early on and later seems to be struggling for a way to shock us anew. As a result, the film's denouement is thematically muddled. Still, In My Skin is intensely personal filmmaking, and de Van deserves credit for her boldness in exposing her obsessions.
 

CAST
Marina de Van	Esther
Laurent Lucas	Vincent
Léa Drucker	Sandrine
Thibault de Montalembert	Daniel
Francois Larnotte	Pierre

PRODUCTION CREDITS
Marina de Van	Director
Laurence Farenc	Screenwriter
Pierre Barougier	Cinematographer
Esbjorn Svensson Trio	Composer (Music Score)