In My Skin (Dans ma peau) (2002)

Subversive, dirty and brave, this feels like something that would have been a Video Nasty three decades ago. Its boldness is by far its greatest quality, and Marina de Van deserves special commendation for the situations she both concocts and enacts. She's a woman with a vision that she absolutely will see through. In My Skin is a mature look at the sometimes faulty interface between the body and the mind, one that really calls our existence into question - Esther realizes, and we alongside her, how we're essentially just shambling sacks of blood and organs. It is gruesome, but not without purpose, and the gore is as as tasteful as it possibly could be. Unfortunately, the film is not without its problems, the likes of which are too glaring to be soothed by its ambitions. Esther's candor about her body issues with her friends and loved ones is presented organically as part of her personality, but they all act detached, even when it's perfectly clear that she's causing herself considerable harm. de Van is committed to bold visual illustrations of Esther's self-mutilation AND how that self-mutilation is viewed by the people around her, but no one ever calls Esther's mental health into question - she more or less "gets away" with what she's doing. de Van's only real hesitation in this narrative comes about because of how the side characters might interfere with the crescendoing violence, so in order to solve this problem, she simply doesn't let them. So we get to see a really awesome fucked-up climax, but the terms on which we reach it are implausible. de Van's tale, so heavily rooted in psychology, takes a rather one-sided perspective; it's Esther's tale we're getting here, concerns of an otherwise realistic cast be damned. This fledgling director could stand to take a few pages out of Cronenberg's book, in terms of balance, but she clearly has a lot to offer and this is more or less a very solid debut work.