Movie Review: Dans Ma Peau

(Originally, I published this on my blog. But then Ryan got all huffy, and asked if I was anti-URFCKD, so I added an image and posted here as well. Sorry for being so lazy.)

I'm a big fan of gore/violence in movies. No joke. While I may cringe, or hide in my hoodie, generally it's in mock-horror. In actuality, I find gratuitous carnage entertaining, even satisfying.

However, even I have my limits and "Dans Ma Peau (In My Skin)" (2002) is the first film I've seen in a long time that went beyond them.

"Dans Ma Peau" is about a woman named Esther (played by Marina de Van) who lives an ostensibly normal life, complete with a patient, understanding boyfriend and a moderately successful career. Her choice in friends is a bit off, but otherwise, she's doing alright. But there's something amiss, some sense of dissatisfaction, or perhaps ennui, as evidenced by her impulsive 'escape' from a work party her friend drags her to. While exploring a construction site (in the dark, by the way), she trips and gashes open her leg. We're to believe that she fails to notice the cavernous wound, until several hours later when she finally has to go to the bathroom. Instead of rushing to the hospital, she goes out for drinks.



The accident inspires a sort of fascination in Esther that leads her to self-mutilation via box-cutters, hinges, and steak knifes, and culminates in self-cannibalism. At one point, she tans a strip of her own flesh out of a sort of perverse sentimentalism.

The movie itself is an interesting look at mortality and vanity, catharsis and repression, belonging and alienation, pain, love, etc., etc., blah blah blah. And perhaps it would've been more tolerable with a different leading lady, but Maria de Van was, I guess, intent on being involved with every facet of the film (she also wrote and directed it.) Short of being difficult to look at, de Van seems like a bad character actor.

I will say this for the movie: it's disturbing enough to watch a woman, supine on a cheap hotel floor, sawing chunks out of her thigh, blood dripping all over her face. Or to see her gnaw on her arm, then pause, pull a nugget of her own skin from between her teeth, look at it... THEN PUT IT BACK IN HER MOUTH AND RESUME CHEWING. But de Van shows us all of this without offering us the relief of music. It's just her, her flesh, the viewer, and the sounds of self-mutilation. It's an uncomfortable silence. It adds an intensity that I can't recall experiencing in any other movie I've recently watched. And I watch a lot of movies. I felt the need to ask Louise to hug my head at one point, because tensing up in the fetal position wasn't enough. Ryan described the movie as inciting his Cremasteric Reflex. Louise actually left the room.

It was horrifying. But not the kind of horrifying that leaves you gratified, feeling like your suffering was justified, because there's no real payoff. In the end, I just kind of felt like I'd been held at Guantanamo for eight years, just for Googling "World Trade Center."

My body hurts just thinking about it.