Dans ma peau
France,
2002, 93 min
Shown in 2003
CREDITS
- dir
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Marina de Van
- prod
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Laurence Farenc
- scr
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Marina de Van
- cam
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Pierre Barougier
- editor
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Mike Fromentin
- cast
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Marina de Van, Laurent Lucas, Léa Drucker, Thibault de Montalembert, Dominique Reymond
- source
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Celluloid Dreams, 2 rue Turgot, Paris 75009, France. FAX: 33-1-49-70-03-71. EMAIL: info@celluloid-dreams.com.
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COMMENTS
Marina de Van in person.
OTHER
Closely associated with François Ozon, for whom she cowrote (Under the Sand, 8 Women) and acted (Sitcom), Marina de Van speaks with her own distinct voice in her daring first feature, confirming the maverick talent revealed in her own short films. Esther (played by de Van herself), who works as a market researcher while her boyfriend is an employee of a large bank, takes a morbid interest in an accidental wound on her own leg. And so Esther begins a journey of progressive isolation as she descends into the increasingly alarming self-mutilation of her beautiful body. Never indulging in gory details, the film is nevertheless a challenging experience for the audience, all the more so since the protagonists live such a very ordinary life. The realistic, even mundane, context makes the fulfillment of her strange and terrible fantasies particularly credible. The oddly amorous relationship which links a woman to her own body and the transgression of “normal” behavior find their aesthetic accomplishment in de Van’s clinical style and sensitive performance. With its scars and wounds and eerie descent into madness, In My Skin stands alongside the darkly fetishistic films of Georges Franju and David Cronenberg.
—Michel Ciment
FACTOID #222
The SFIFF has honored some of cinema’s best lensers with tributes, including James Wong Howe (1974), Gabriel Figueroa (1984), Nestor Alemendros (1986), Ernest Dickerson (1991) and John Alton (1994). Cinematographer Haskell Wexler received a tribute as a featured filmmaker in the New Directors series, when he appeared with his directorial debut, Medium Cool.
