Dans
ma peau is a rare treat: a debut feature that could
very well leave an indelible trace in the annals of genre cinema, at once an
earnest portrait of psychological decay and a cringe-inducing thrill ride with
the potential to destabilize even the most hardened of spectators. The film is
authored by a doubtlessly talented young woman by the name of Marina De Van
(previously co-screenwriter for François Ozon’s 8 femmes and Sous le sable)
who courageously frames herself, and her body, in a bid to widen the cannon of
body horror by adding a very personal dimension to it. The result is absolutely
mesmerizing, if not for some self-mutilation sequences that border on the
unbearable, then for the newcomer’s surprising mastery of tension-building and
uncanny ability to exteriorize hidden passions in a meaningful and honest way.
There is a new dissident voice in genre cinema, my friends, and it will lure
you right into its fucked-up world.
Be ready to enter a very dark world lying
just beyond the veil of yours...
The story here is centered on Esther (Marina
De Van), an obnoxious Parisian yuppie working for some trendy marketing outfit
with windows for walls. Following a quick set-up in which we are introduced to
her boyfriend Vincent and school chum Sandrine, the protagonist is shown
attending a crowded party during which she is severely wounded. The resulting
gashes on her right leg are quite nasty, and they seem to seriously throw her
off kilter. As the plot unfolds, she starts sublimating the stress inherent to
her high-profile job (and her crumbling personal life) by way of incessant
self-mutilation, the incitation towards which is provided by the very availability of her wounds. These wounds
are probed with the fingers, not unlike the flaccid flesh around her belly and
breasts, then with various objects, metal rulers, knives and scissors until
more and more scars cover her… that is until her physical state starts matching
her mental state. In the process, Esther gradually alienates her boyfriend and
colleagues, choosing instead a lonely spiral of morbid self-discovery. The
final shot of the film is equally challenging as anything else in there, so you
will want to stick around for it. Or for any prior depiction of
psychosis-induced butchery, sensuous self-cannibalism or other such
eccentricities for which genre fans are willing to crowd theaters.
What stands out most prominently over the course of the film is the
director’s sheer courage in baring both her body and her mind for art, often in
desperately self-damaging situations that could’ve buried lesser authors. By
focusing almost solely on her own physical self as object of constant fascination and
violence, De Van even out-muscles Shinya Tsukamoto, her Japanese equivalent and
predecessor (whom we will discuss later). But the centrality of Esther’s body,
however crucial it is to narrative construction, is not necessarily easy to
achieve, and that is where the director really earns her stars. The various
degrees of nudity that De Van brazenly exhibits throughout the film obviously
help contextualize her body within the cruel realm of self-consciousness, and
should be commended as such. But it’s ultimately in the location of that body
within the diegesis that she manages to create a truly sensuous, self-centered
landscape full of meaning.
Director Marina De Van delivers an incredibly
powerful performance as neurotic yuppie Esther.
Here, the body is often exposed and scrutinized before the surrounding
space in a bid to establish it (and
not the exasperated boyfriend) as the primary object of Esther’s passion. This is quite eloquently exemplified by the
hotel scene, which I would be tempted to qualify as one of the quintessential
sequences of self-gratification in cinematic history. Following a stressful
business dinner during which Esther has sliced her arm extensively, the young
woman suddenly spots a neon sign buzzing on the side of a nearby hotel. The
film then quickly cuts to a series of close shots wherein the protagonist is
cutting pieces out of her, eating them and licking the resulting wound in a
singular display of self-eroticism that will have you mesmerized for the better
part of two minutes. It is only after the deed is done, and Esther’s spell has
started waning, that the location of her body within the room is confirmed and
the surrounding décor is revealed. The immediate and mechanical focus put on
the body, and its later subservience to the space where it has “awakened” will
undoubtedly remind one of a passionate love affair, especially where the locale
(a hotel room) is concerned. Like with any love affair, the immediate focus is
put on carnality, with little importance awarded to what surrounds it. It is
only after climax that one becomes aware of what his/her animal self has
achieved in a thrust of passion. It is only then that one’s surroundings become
apparent, and surprising in their banality. By thus likening self-mutilation,
and self-cannibalism to a love affair, De Van not only implies a direct
correlation between passion and self-mutilation, but she does so by using
universally intelligible signs. And that is the first step in attempting to
create an understanding, and not just a show out of such marginalized, yet
brutally human temptations.
This brings us to another crucial feature
of De Van’s film: it’s ability to draw on personal drama to better tell a
universally intelligible tale. The honesty and candor inherent to the whole
story, and its location within the real world of a real person is indeed a
welcome departure from the politics of distanciation usually reserved for
characters with such inclinations. More specifically, the depiction of
self-mutilation as something primordially passionate, not necessarily sexual in
nature and befitting even upper class professionals is key to shifting the
representation thereof away from the grim sensationalism of exploitation cinema
toward the engrossing realism of arthouse cinema. This is essential in begging our
understanding of the protagonist’s state of mind and not our simple
condemnation of her actions, such as that advocated by all the peripheral
characters onscreen. As such, the film is a heartfelt testimony to the power of
addiction, and its roots in the most mundane of emotional unbalance. Whether
you decide to take it for what it is, or to see it as a simple effort meant to
shock will in turn determine your place within, or outside the dialogue
concerning the emotional strain endured by truly passionate people.
Esther's love affair with herself constitutes one of
the most unsettling moments of self-eroticism in cinema.
Being a former adept of self-mutilation
myself, I felt compelled by De Van’s character, even though we share almost
nothing in common, neither gender, nor class or home country. It is in the
sheer passion on display that I found my reflection, and in the process of
inscribing one’s psychological angst directly on the flesh in a bid to
exteriorize it, and secretly beg others to notice. Personally, I used to cut
myself in order to externalize my despair. Not necessarily in a destructive
way, but in an artistic one, by using the body as canvas (not unlike Esther,
who eventually starts photographing her wounds). Here, self-mutilation is
equally therapeutic, a way to ward off stress and feelings of inadequacy by
inscribing, and leaving them on the flesh.
The one thing I first had trouble to fathom within the narrative is just how readily Esther confessed her passion to Sandrine, who in turn
rushed to remove scissors and other metal devices form her reach. But then I
understood that the desire to share one’s despair is equally human as the
harboring of that despair. What isn’t human is in other people’s reactions, in
their fear, anger, immediate disapprobation, and most importantly, their lack
of willingness to understand self-mutilation, an activity in which we all
indulge, but with various degrees of passion (some eat hamburgers and bite
their nails, while others harbor scars). Pure passion is fearsome apparently,
and that is also what the film vies to depict in the acrid reactions of
Esther’s friends and relatives. Passion is self-destructing, but it is also
liberating as we can see in Esther’s transformation from docile bourgeois to
beastly artist. And it is in that dialectic of passion within bourgeois society
that we understand humanity, through everyday observations by one of its
victims and adepts.
Like Andrei Tarkovsky, who constantly
discussed the importance of time in order to extend his own life into others’,
so too does De Van allow her own story to reach out into the world. Same as
Tarkovsky’s The Mirror, a very
personal film about the director’s own life, Dans ma peau will likely find more resonance amongst the director’s
peers than any commercial attempt at depicting the same reality. In turn, maybe
too will De Van’s courage inspire some courage in others, forcing dialogue
about the reasons and motivations behind self-mutilation and not its simple
medicalization as a pathological practice.
The willingness to understand is the first step in
aiding those with mental problems.
The opposition between the personal and
commercial depictions of self-mutilation can best be assessed by comparing the
Japanese iconography with the iconography contained in De Van’s film. Being a
staple of Japanese society, suicide and its lesser forms enjoy a certain
visibility within popular culture, often being depicted as nearly mundane
events. Furthermore, they are hardly ever shown in a realistic fashion, often
being accompanied by highly exaggerated sound effects, such as splashing or
squishing. This adds a comical, rather than grave dimension to these events,
making them as equally commonplace as the murders in gore films. The serious
appraisal of such issues as self-mutilation is thus carefully avoided through
exaggeration, often making them out to be merely superficial character points
(see Tokyo Gore Police, Ichi the Killer, Suicide Club…). In Dans ma
peau however, the skin bears real marks and De Van’s interpretation remains
low-key. With subtle and effective characterization to boot, her protagonist is
all but the extravagant eccentric from Japanese genre cinema, tenderly peeling
off the skin from her arm instead of having it spurt all over the walls. This
iconographic discrepancy is explicitly addressed during the film, as Esther is
discussing culture-specific advertising with a couple of marketing honchos.
Theirs is a conversation about a symbolic gesture that got lost in translation
during a marketing campaign. In effect, they might as well be talking about
self-mutilation as another symbolic gesture with diverging cultural
implications. Such a mise-en-abîme is incredibly clever and effective, and it
further reminds us of the present film’s enormous debt to the personal cinema
of Shinya Tsukamoto.
I if were to describe Dans ma peau to someone with absolutely no knowledge thereof, I
would say that it is a Parisian female version of Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man as both films
similarly vie to depict the physical imprint left on us by urban angst and the
hopeless rat race in which we participate so eagerly and invest so much of our
souls. But where Tsukamoto’s hyperkinetic mise-en-scène focuses on otherworldly
monster suits and the explosive power of repressed emotions, De Van does a
subtler, and eventually more effective job of creating a sensuous landscape in
which the spectator is helplessly drawn. Obviously, the naturalistic nature of
Esther’s affliction helps ease us into the narrative, much more so than
Tsukamoto’s extravagant cyborgs, but it is eventually in the overbid of common
grounds that the film really strikes home. It is in the impassibility of
friends, the anger of lovers and the coldness of bosses that we can really
reflect on our own lives and the floodgates we have erected to keep our
emotions in check. After all, we’ve all experienced petty rivalries with school
chums, we’ve all experienced mundane disputes with significant others and we’ve
all felt unsure about our professional proficiency. Hence, we can truly relate
to Esther in her ordeal, especially where the painfully mundane nature of the
dialogues is concerned, as well as the likening of her self-consuming passion
to a simple extra-conjugal affair. All of these realistic elements vie to
create a powerfully relevant film about Parisian angst in the midst of the
city’s rejuvenation with the fresh blood of ruthless young capitalists.
Shades of Tetsuo are omnipresent in Dans ma peau.
Obviously, Dans ma peau is interesting in its subject matter alone, but it
wouldn’t have soared to such heights, were it not for De Van’s surprisingly
strong hand at the helm, and her ability to masterfully sustain tension
throughout. In the process, she often relies on her own earnest physical
performance to create affect and that goes entirely to her credit. That said,
some of the most shocking sequences in the film are 100% performance-based,
such as the many lengthy shots in which Esther sensually scrapes her skin with
blades while uncomfortably contorted, or that awkward pre-sex scene with her
suspicious boyfriend. But then, De Van also makes great use of the offscreen
space, framing either her face while in the process of reacting to pain, or
alternating shots of ongoing butchery with shots of the surrounding space (as
exemplified in the dinner scene), hence maximizing our anticipation as to the
intensity of what we don’t see. This
leaves us in a perpetual sense of eagerness and unease, especially in the
split-screen sequence near the end, where we can only infer from the blood
onscreen the atrocious actions taking place offscreen.
The concept of the split-screen is quite
straightforward, especially in its original iteration during the opening
credits. It prefigures both the schizoid nature of Esther’s personality, but
also the idea of a personal reality slightly out of synch with the reality of
the masses (as exemplified by the grayish right frame). The later iteration of
the concept, once Esther has gone for good past the threshold of “normalcy”
belongs to another level of filmmaking altogether. This late sequence is
actually quite masterful in its probing of the very personal, very chaotic
space of an increasingly damaged Esther, and it does so with visceral bravado and
a surprising knack for composition. The pattern of spattered blood across the
room is not only perfect, but the complementary of both the images contained in
the two frames adds another dimension to the complexity of the psychological
landscape being shot. As for the near total absence of active humanity within
the frame, it makes the scene that much unnerving as a challenge to our morbid
expectations. But all in all, this sequence is the trademark of a great
filmmaker, fully in control of her craft and able to use experimental
techniques in a novel and meaningful way.
Offscreen space plays a huge part in
shaping our most dire expectations.
The story structure might be quite simple
here, with the crux of the narrative abiding by a strict action/reaction logic,
but the inclusion of several key symbolic scenes filmed with an incredible
knack for tension-building greatly help dynamize the ensemble. Deriving from an
acute sense of sensual confusion (due mostly to the loud music playing in the
background), the opening party scene quickly establishes Esther as a person
prone to emotional wanderings, as exemplified by the tight tracking shots
through the weirdly oppressive interiors of her host’s house, and the near
pitch black construction site where she is first hurt. By cultivating a strong
sense of disorientation (through the protagonist’s wanderings) and showcasing
the initial soiling of the quiet bourgeois façade (through the apparition of
blood on the white carpet), this scene is a great introduction to the following
events.
But then, there are several other scenes showcasing
the raw intensity of the director, scenes that could easily go down in history
as some of the most damaging items ever imposed on human eyes. The hotel scene
and the first self-mutilation scene are intensely focused displays of damaging
self-eroticism, but then there are the pool scene and the dinner scene, two
beacons of highly expressive, highly personal horror. The pool scene shows
Esther announcing the obtaining of a big promotion to dumbfounded colleague
(and school friend) Sandrine in the posh sports complex comprised within their
office building. Sandrine is obviously jealous and she throws the appropriate
stare at her friend. She is so jealous in fact, that when three bathing dudes
take a hold of Esther, and try to shove her in the pool, she doesn’t react one
bit, despite the fact that she knows full well about her friend’s injury. In
this dramatically crucial scene, Esther pathetically holds on to Sandrine’s
chair, screaming for help that never comes. It is only when one of the three
dudes spots a piece of bandage protruding from under her pants that they all
decide to let go. But then they also leave Esther with some bloodied beige
pants and the face of a poor woman humiliated beyond belief. The symbolic power
of this scene derives less from its contents, than the masterful way in which
it is shot, with rhythm as the key to understanding’s Esther’s panic, and
subsequently, the importance of Sandrine’s treason. The pale blood soiling the
pale fabric, revealed through a skillful pan is the cherry on top of this
impeccable scene.
Esther is left vulnerable by Sandrine's treason.
But then, there is the dinner scene, a
vibrant testimony to one’s perceived inadequacy when threading the unsure
waters of high society and a monument to crafty filmmaking. It shows Esther at
the height of her uncertainty while discussing marketing strategies and
European tourism with three knowledgeable business people. After agreeing to a
sip of high-quality wine, she starts downing glass after glass of the tangy red
stuff, feeling all the more inadequate as a drunken stupor sets in. And so the
conversation rages on, with the protagonist keeping her interventions to a
minimum, smiling awkwardly instead of attempting potentially disastrous replies
to the trio’s self-assured ramblings. At some point, she even starts imagining
her arm dissociated from her body, as foreshadowed in a earlier scene. To
insure that her arm is still part of her, and to distill some of the stress
inherent to her ongoing professional failure, she starts slicing her arm with
passion, plunging her knife’s edge directly into the folds of her skin and
twisting it with rage.
Thanks to some sharp editing and a truly inspired turn
by De Van, both the intensity of Esther’s self-destructive passion, and the
overwhelming nature of her unease come across seamlessly. The intellectual
ramblings of her counterparts, their incessant flow of would-be high-flying
remarks about tourism and the importance of culture-specific marketing
techniques saturates the soundtrack, but it is Esther’s location outside of these
ramblings, and on the verge of sheer madness that strikes us even more
poignantly. The result is a very dense scene where we can pinpoint Esther’s
untold suffering with every awkward smile and every sideway glance made by her
colleagues. The whole situation is made all the more desperate thanks to the
graphic bloodletting we get to witness from a passionately unhappy individual.
Even the cuts away from the gory close-ups of Esther’s bloody arm fail to
really comfort us, making our heart race instead with the perspective of seeing
it again. With things so quickly getting out of hand, this dinner scene proves
to be an engulfing maelstrom of violent impressions that drags us along for the
ride, and as such, a testament to the efficiency of the whole film as a
powerful punch to the gut.
The dinner scene is a testament
to De Van's skill as a filmmaker.
Thanks to a marvelous performance in front,
and behind the camera, newcomer Marina De Van herein manages to craft one of
the most intriguing and challenging debut features in recent memory and a film
that will surely go down in the annals of genre cinema. Its sheer power derives
not only from the uncompromising display of passionate extremities that it
contains, but also from a certain knack for editing raw scenes of tension. As
such, De Van could readily challenge many seasoned vets, and even outdo them
thanks to the edge provided by her very personal take on the material at hand.
All in all, Dans ma peau is a major
achievement and a must see for anyone who likes to see raw truth on celluloid.
Be warned however, this one is not for the squeamish, or anybody who won’t
accept self-cannibalism as the passionate underside of obesity.
4/5
A daft, challenging film, Dans ma
peau is a mesmerizing debut by courageous Marina De Van and a monument to
the power of raw emotion in the process of artistic creation.
