Erik Moe: Critic at Large

I watched Marina de Van’s In My Skin (2002) this evening. I can’t say that I recommend it to all audiences, but it was certainly one of the most intense films I’ve seen. The story follows Esther (played by writer/director de Van) as she becomes obsessed with cutting / self mutilation after a fall leaves her leg seriously gashed. Already distant, she becomes more removed from her friends, boyfriend, and coworkers as cutting becomes her only emotional release and coping mechanism for her stresses. The topic has been touched on by several remarkable films in recent years (Secretary, Thirteen, and The Piano Teacher come to mind), and it is definitely an incomprehensibly scary situation to be confronted with. While Secretary and Thirteen both presented the phenomena in the context of a coming of age story, In My Skin borrows from suspense and horror. Though Esther is the central character, she doesn’t say much. We learn about her by watching and hearing the struggles of her boyfriend and others around her. A couple of scenes were really impossible to watch (I was glad that I wasn’t in a movie theater but instead could get up and distract myself with dish washing). The Joan-of-Arc-like shots of emotional anguish on Marina de Van’s face intercut with those gruesome images is remarkable — and it is that intense emotional identification that didn’t come through in those more, um… uplifting(?) films. The Alice in Wonderland feel of the business dinner also will be hard to forget…

I hadn’t known Marina de Van’s name before watching this film, but as she wrote, directed, and starred in this film, she is one to watch. A quick search shows that she worked with Francois Ozon on See the Sea, which I also recommend… The DVD includes two of her short films. Both were interesting, but I was most amused by a line in the second film, Psy-Ops, which depicts a very unusual therapist and his patient. At one point the patient confides “I’m afraid my anus will crack and I’ll make star-shaped excrements. It’s part of my fear of America.” Now there’s a cultural critique…