coup plus profonde - Dans Ma Peau/In My Skin (2002)

aka THTH takes its first dip into the New French Extremity/Cinéma du Corps pool

Content warning: talk of severe self harm (in discussion of the plot), some injury detail in images used, some squelchy food talk

Lately, I have been thinking about bodies. Specifically, the myriad of ways our bodies can betray us. The ways we seek to regain some control in that betrayal. I’m also thinking about disconnection, dissociation from our bodies, feeling like they aren’t ours. There is something uniquely terrifying about that feeling, and when horror looks through the lens of the body to explore it, it produces some of its most effective work.

I needed to sit with the feeling of my own disconnection this week, which led me to finally dip a toe in the murky waters of the cinéma du corps, also known as the New French Extremity. Because as it turns out, I already had the perfect film for this week sitting right on my shelf.

Spoilers, naturally. Also, this is not exactly the lightest film THTH has ever covered, so tread carefully if you do end up watching it.

In My Skin (2002)

Original title: Dans Ma Peau

Written and directed by: Marina de Van

Starring: Marina de Van, Laurent Lucas, Léa Drucker, Thibault de Montalembert, Adrien de Van, et al.

Running time: 93 minutes

Original release date: December 4, 2002 (France)

the plot, in brief

Esther (de Van) is a marketing professional living in Paris. On the surface, she’s doing just fine in her life: she’s making plans to move in with her boyfriend Vincent (Laurent Lucas) and she’s got promising career prospects. But one evening, Esther attends a house party with her colleague and friend Sandrine (Léa Drucker). Uncomfortable with the pressure to network, Esther wanders into the garden, in the dark. She trips over some building equipment and badly injures her leg, something she, strangely, does not realize until much later, when she inspects the wound in the house’s bathroom.

From that point, Esther develops a fascination with her body, and her pain, one that spirals into devastating self-destruction…

the fall

As far as story construction goes, In My Skin can feasibly be divided into five segments. The first segment introduces us to Esther, as played by de Van. When we first meet her, she’s typing away at a report, briefly interrupted by her boyfriend Vincent (Laurent Lucas). We get the basics of her life: she works in marketing, seems to be doing well at it, is on the verge of moving in with Vincent. On the surface life seems to be going rather well for her.

Sandrine (Léa Drucker), her colleague and friend (Esther later indicates they have known each other since at least their college days), accompanies her to a work do/house party, a chance to network that Esther doesn’t seem too comfortable with taking. Seeking a moment alone, Esther wanders into the garden, with the night pitch black around her. So dark is it that Esther doesn’t realize until it’s too late that she’s walking directly into a pile of industrial building equipment (the house is in some state of being renovated, which is briefly mentioned by Sandrine). She trips and falls, and she is at least vaguely aware of some kind of injury, but the extent of which isn’t revealed until she ventures to the upstairs bathroom.

the cut

In one of two transformative moments, happening in short succession, Esther goes to the house’s bathroom to inspect the wound, and is shocked to discover it’s in fact pretty fucking gnarly. To the point where she, while sitting on the edge of the tub, clocks that she has in fact left a trail of blood across the house.

But Esther seems to shrug it off, keen to leave, even when Sandrine and one of the party-goers panic because they think someone has been attacked. It isn’t until much later, after she’s been to the bar for drinks, that Esther seeks medical attention and we get our second transformative moment. The doctor (Adrien de Van) patches up her leg and questions how it’s possible that she didn’t feel the injury initially, even (jokingly) asking if she’s sure that’s her leg before recommending that she come in for a skin graft (I cannot stress this enough: this wound is very nasty). Esther, however, appears unconcerned, watching with a fascination as the doctor stitches her up. There’s a strange sense of softening in her face, a hint of curiosity.

It sets the stage for what’s to come.

the descent

The next day. Esther is in the bathtub, her leg wrapped in tightly. She plays with the folds of skin around her thigh, again fascinated by the movements, the ways of her body. She comes out and dries off, which is when Vincent comes in, immediately alarmed by the sight of her leg. He’s concerned when Esther relays that she didn’t realize the wound was there until much later. They argue, briefly, before making up but it is clear that there is a distinctly unpleasant streak to Vincent, one that will be on full show later but we get glimpses of here, when he sneakily pokes her arm to test if she can feel it.

There is a tension that’s building within Esther. While she is advancing at work, she doesn’t seem to feel particularly keen on it, and when she struggles with the misspelling of a specific word in a report, she snaps. Walks away from her desk, to an empty floor under construction. Grabs a metal door hinge. Cuts into her leg, not a superficial wound but a deep one.

When she comes back into the office, she asks Sandrine to come for a drink with her, something Sandrine quite bluntly rejects as she’s busy. Esther, hoping to find a sympathetic ear, confides in Sandrine what she’s just done but Sandrine reacts horrified. Worried, she invited Esther over to stay the night. When Esther takes a shower (after Sandrine has removed any sharps from the bathroom), Sandrine is even more worried to spot the severity of the additional wounds Esther has made.

Esther realizes quickly that she cannot share the thing that is providing her a release; Vincent argues with her, asking her what he’s done wrong, ignoring Esther’s requests to stop fucking asking her about what’s happening. Sandrine, in one of the film’s most upsetting scenes, does not help her friend when - at a pool party - a group of male colleagues “playfully” grab her with the intent of throwing her into the pool. Esther, panicked at the thought of her leg and her cuts being revealed, begs Sandrine for help but Sandrine sits and stares, only vaguely apologizing later, seemingly caring more about Esther having bled through the trousers she borrowed from her.

The mounting pressures at work, Vincent’s constant prodding (and multiple mentions of them moving in together), Sandrine’s jealousy upon Esther being promoted… everything comes to a boiling point at a work dinner, where Esther experiences a bizarre dissociative episode in which her arm first starts moving of its own accord, grabbing the bloody steak on her plate, before detaching from her entirely. Esther starts stabbing at the arm with her steak knife, woozily observing other restaurant-goers eat meat and fruits in agonizing slow-motion. She’s losing control in real time, of her working life, of her private life, of her self.

Eventually, Esther excuses herself from the bewildered and bemused table of business people, running away from the restaurant with the knife still on her person. In a stupor, she checks into a hotel across the road and embarks on a sort of odyssey of cutting, biting, eating, loving on her own flesh. None of what de Van shows is sensationalized; instead, there’s a tenderness to it, a realness. Shadows, closeups, no music apart from the sounds of Esther taking herself in, reaching further beyond just to regain the tiniest bit of control. It’s truly a grueling scene to sit with, and if I am totally honest, I had to pause twice to catch my breath before carrying on.

Afterwards, Esther sits in the car, parked outside Vincent’s window. She makes a split-second decision to crash the car, in order to explain her injuries, something that Vincent seems to accept but not entirely given the way he looks at her wounds.

Vincent talks to Esther about places they can move to, Esther smiles wearily and nods, apologizes profusely after being reprimanded by her boss for her behaviour over dinner. On her way to work the next day, Esther’s reality seems to split. She blinks, her vision going blurry. Again, she dissociates - we see glimpses of what’s happening when she comes to at the checkout of the supermarket.

the green hotel room

Esther, instead of heading to work, checks into another hotel room. De Van chooses to play this scene as the opposite of the earlier hotel scene, the screen splitting into a double POV of knives, fabric, a photo camera, blood, cuts, eating, more blood. As per Cine Outsider’s review of the film:

By the time we reach the climactic sequence, which de Van presents in unsettlingly stylised form (aware that she can neither top the hotel scene nor explicitly show what Esther is doing to herself without completely losing her audience), you can pretty much select your own metaphor: abusive relationships, sado-masochism, the deadening effect of the corporate world, incest, drug addiction... There are plenty more to choose from and all of them work, because despite the seemingly disassociative nature of Esther's obsession, there are too many familiar touchstones along the way for us to stay at arm's length. We may not understand why she does what she does, but to a certain degree many of us have been there too or know someone who has, whether it be a destructive or unhealthy relationship that only we were unable to see the harm in or a dependence on drugs, alcohol or even cigarettes that feels fine while indulging but is slowly tearing away at the body inside.

The sequence is dizzying, deliberately so, and it feels like a minor miracle that she can later still leave her hotel room. She walks to a pharmacists, enquiring about preserving a piece of her skin which she claims was “a bad piece” cut out during surgery. Back in her hotel room, she calls both work and Vincent to apologize for her absence, telling Vincent she won’t be home that night.

the end?

Eventually, the following morning, Esther, with the shriveled piece of skin tucked in her bra, leaves the hotel room. Only, she doesn’t. The camera immediately cuts from the hotel room door slamming shut to Esther, lying on the bed, motionless, eyes vacant. She’s still breathing, but it’s clear she’s not present. De Van loops the same shot of the camera, panning over Esther, once, twice, three times before the film ends, cutting to black.

De Van leaves the ending up to interpretation, to some extent. It’s possible that Esther hallucinated leaving the room. It is possible she did leave, only to come back, now stuck in a loop that she cannot get out of. Maybe a few hours pass between the door closing and that final shot, and there is missing time in which Esther experienced something that made her completely lose herself to her own state of mind. Or it’s possible that she’s lying there, close to death from blood loss. There’s no easy answer whichever way you think it through and that’s what makes it such a gut punch.

In researching the film, I found an interview Marina de Van did with Steve McFarlane of the Museum of Modern Art in 2022. De Van very rarely gives interviews, and from reading the one with McFarlane, it’s not hard to see why. It was illuminating and frightening to discover that In My Skin is truly *her* story, a film made as a conscious attempt to stop her own self-mutilating and imbued with moments that were not too far off from what de Van was actually experiencing at the time.

Lately I’ve been thinking about bodies. And in In My Skin, I found some solace for my weary brain.