Review by: zer0hal0
Date: 16th April 2008
"It is through my body that I am in the world, that I am connected with others. If I am no longer
my body, what am I? Where does this desire come from to want to see what the body is and if I
am 'inside'?"
A young research analyst named Esther (Marina de Van) attends a party one late evening with her
best friend Sandrine (Léa Drucker). Throughout the night she decides to wander off from that
party and through a garden in the backyard. Esther accidentally stumbles and then trips over,
falling into a bunch of steel poles and scrap metal, unknowingly injuring her leg. As she begins to
brush off the dirt from her torn pants and jacket, Esther turns back around and proceeds back to
the party. It’s not until she has to go to the toilet, when she notices a blood trail on the white
carpet. Esther looks down and finds a huge gash out of her leg and begins to go into a state of
shock, but strangely at least not able to feel any pain. Concerned about her leg and her friends
finding out what happened, she tells her friend that she has had enough and is going home to her
boyfriend. Quickly she decides that the wound is far too deep to take care of herself and seeks
medical attention from a nearby hospital. As the young doctor examines Esther’s wound for joint
and ligament damage, he seems to be far more concerned that Esther didn’t come to the hospital
anytime sooner, by noticing that the wound happened several hours ago. As the doctor cleans her
wound, Esther soon becomes somewhat fascinated and drawn in by watching the doctor dig out
the scrap piece of metal from her leg, before stitching her up. That following morning her boyfriend
Vincent (Laurent Lucas) walks in on Esther undressing her bandage, and instantly becomes
concerned and begins to ask her same main question the doctor did “It’s strange you didn’t feel
nothing”, Esther replies “I guess it was shock” then begins to pick the scab off her wound. The
next following days Esther finds herself at every giving chance alone picking her wounds scabs,
which soon escalates into slicing, cutting her legs and arms with any sharp objects that is laying
around the house and office. As Sandrine and Vincent soon start to it hard to face the fact that
Esther is doing these bizarre things she does to own herself, they soon start turning a blind eye to
her sickness and help her hide what she is doing from the world around her.
In My Skin is definitely one film that will leave you thinking on my many levels. Why would a
person do this to themselves? Why don’t they get help? What can you possibly get out of cutting
yourself up with a knife? No matter what, we will never really understand why people tend to self
mutilate themselves. Honestly… I had a friend who went through the same experience as Marina
de Van’s character did in this film, I asked those questions and many more, and still I could never
get a straight answer. Even to this day I believe this is a mental sickness, kind of like
schizophrenia but far more extreme. She never said once that the voices told her to do it, but the
fact she just enjoyed the extreme pain which made whatever that was bothering her at the time
go away. She saw so many doctors, shrinks and was on so many different type of medications to
try and stabilize her condition, and still they weren’t able to stop her from hurting herself. Until
one day she cut herself so deep and they weren’t able to stop the bleeding, so she bled to death.
And still the questions I asked are still left unanswered, and sometimes to this day it really anger’s
me.
Viewing this movie it really opened my eyes, and not to mention it also scared me. It was like if I
was able to take a quick glimpse through her eyes and into her life before she left this earth. It’s
quite shocking and made my skin crawl when watching In My Skin. This film even managed to
make me feel light headed, and so nauseated that at times I had to turn my head in the opposite
direction. But that didn’t even matter because the sound effects alone and hearing the sound of
her ripping into her flesh, and deep breathing was enough make me feel sick in the guts. I guess
with what I witnessed her do, came into play and caused me to feel like this. But still it doesn’t
hide the fact I can sit down and watch people being torn apart, eaten alive, decapitated, hacked
to death and it doesn’t even faze me one bit. But watching a person take to themselves with a
sharp instrument and hurt themselves like that is just simply horrifying.
I really have to hand it to filmmaker/actress Marina de Van for creating a film like In My Skin, I
doubt any other filmmaker especially a male director could ever create or manage to have such a
impact on its audience as much as Marina de Van did. She played a convincing role within this
film; she knew how to capture a person who does this type of thing and most of all gross out her
audience. It really takes someone a lot of guts to grab a knife and ram it into their skin, and not
to mention some of the scenes in this film are quite disturbing to view.
In My Skin is a film that those who enjoy watching self body mutilation movies are going to enjoy.
And if you are a huge fan of directors David Cronenberg, Georges Franju and of course Roman
Polanski, well then Marina de Van‘s: In My Skin definitely falls into those other well known
filmmaker’s category. In My Skin has now found its way onto DVD (region 4) in Australia, thanks
to our official sponsor Siren Visual.
Unfortunately the DVD is bare bones: you only have one In My Skin trailer which is presented on
this DVD. It would have been nice to have an audio commentary by Marina de Van on the DVD,
because I personally would of like to know what her exact thoughts were, when she made this
movie.
Date: 16th April 2008
"It is through my body that I am in the world, that I am connected with others. If I am no longer
my body, what am I? Where does this desire come from to want to see what the body is and if I
am 'inside'?"
A young research analyst named Esther (Marina de Van) attends a party one late evening with her
best friend Sandrine (Léa Drucker). Throughout the night she decides to wander off from that
party and through a garden in the backyard. Esther accidentally stumbles and then trips over,
falling into a bunch of steel poles and scrap metal, unknowingly injuring her leg. As she begins to
brush off the dirt from her torn pants and jacket, Esther turns back around and proceeds back to
the party. It’s not until she has to go to the toilet, when she notices a blood trail on the white
carpet. Esther looks down and finds a huge gash out of her leg and begins to go into a state of
shock, but strangely at least not able to feel any pain. Concerned about her leg and her friends
finding out what happened, she tells her friend that she has had enough and is going home to her
boyfriend. Quickly she decides that the wound is far too deep to take care of herself and seeks
medical attention from a nearby hospital. As the young doctor examines Esther’s wound for joint
and ligament damage, he seems to be far more concerned that Esther didn’t come to the hospital
anytime sooner, by noticing that the wound happened several hours ago. As the doctor cleans her
wound, Esther soon becomes somewhat fascinated and drawn in by watching the doctor dig out
the scrap piece of metal from her leg, before stitching her up. That following morning her boyfriend
Vincent (Laurent Lucas) walks in on Esther undressing her bandage, and instantly becomes
concerned and begins to ask her same main question the doctor did “It’s strange you didn’t feel
nothing”, Esther replies “I guess it was shock” then begins to pick the scab off her wound. The
next following days Esther finds herself at every giving chance alone picking her wounds scabs,
which soon escalates into slicing, cutting her legs and arms with any sharp objects that is laying
around the house and office. As Sandrine and Vincent soon start to it hard to face the fact that
Esther is doing these bizarre things she does to own herself, they soon start turning a blind eye to
her sickness and help her hide what she is doing from the world around her.
In My Skin is definitely one film that will leave you thinking on my many levels. Why would a
person do this to themselves? Why don’t they get help? What can you possibly get out of cutting
yourself up with a knife? No matter what, we will never really understand why people tend to self
mutilate themselves. Honestly… I had a friend who went through the same experience as Marina
de Van’s character did in this film, I asked those questions and many more, and still I could never
get a straight answer. Even to this day I believe this is a mental sickness, kind of like
schizophrenia but far more extreme. She never said once that the voices told her to do it, but the
fact she just enjoyed the extreme pain which made whatever that was bothering her at the time
go away. She saw so many doctors, shrinks and was on so many different type of medications to
try and stabilize her condition, and still they weren’t able to stop her from hurting herself. Until
one day she cut herself so deep and they weren’t able to stop the bleeding, so she bled to death.
And still the questions I asked are still left unanswered, and sometimes to this day it really anger’s
me.
Viewing this movie it really opened my eyes, and not to mention it also scared me. It was like if I
was able to take a quick glimpse through her eyes and into her life before she left this earth. It’s
quite shocking and made my skin crawl when watching In My Skin. This film even managed to
make me feel light headed, and so nauseated that at times I had to turn my head in the opposite
direction. But that didn’t even matter because the sound effects alone and hearing the sound of
her ripping into her flesh, and deep breathing was enough make me feel sick in the guts. I guess
with what I witnessed her do, came into play and caused me to feel like this. But still it doesn’t
hide the fact I can sit down and watch people being torn apart, eaten alive, decapitated, hacked
to death and it doesn’t even faze me one bit. But watching a person take to themselves with a
sharp instrument and hurt themselves like that is just simply horrifying.
I really have to hand it to filmmaker/actress Marina de Van for creating a film like In My Skin, I
doubt any other filmmaker especially a male director could ever create or manage to have such a
impact on its audience as much as Marina de Van did. She played a convincing role within this
film; she knew how to capture a person who does this type of thing and most of all gross out her
audience. It really takes someone a lot of guts to grab a knife and ram it into their skin, and not
to mention some of the scenes in this film are quite disturbing to view.
In My Skin is a film that those who enjoy watching self body mutilation movies are going to enjoy.
And if you are a huge fan of directors David Cronenberg, Georges Franju and of course Roman
Polanski, well then Marina de Van‘s: In My Skin definitely falls into those other well known
filmmaker’s category. In My Skin has now found its way onto DVD (region 4) in Australia, thanks
to our official sponsor Siren Visual.
Unfortunately the DVD is bare bones: you only have one In My Skin trailer which is presented on
this DVD. It would have been nice to have an audio commentary by Marina de Van on the DVD,
because I personally would of like to know what her exact thoughts were, when she made this
movie.
| "Flesh has never looked so beautiful" |
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In My Skin
DVD/APPROX. 93 MINS/2002/FRANCE R18+
DVD/APPROX. 93 MINS/2002/FRANCE R18+
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8.5
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