In My Skin (2002) ★★★★
At a party, Esther notices a trail of blood behind her on the floor and realises she has somehow sustained serious injuries to the skin on her lower leg. Wanting to tell her best friend but not having the opportunity for a one-to-one conversation, she keeps the information to herself and only later seeks medical attention.
Realising she is unusual in having inconsistent sensation in her skin, Esther begins to explore her body, firstly pulling the skin when in the bath and then, when bored at work, taking a sharp corner of a hinge to her leg. From there, she seemingly feels alienated from her own body, once (during a meal with her boss and a couple of business connections) observes her left arm as an entirely foreign object with which she has no connection, a connection she seeks to establish with an knife and then a fork under the restaurant table.
Disturbing and compelling, this is a fascinating look at a woman's journey into self-mutilation, a bloody and dangerous method of feeling something in a mundane life of office work.
Similar in some respects to Roman Polanski's Repulsion and David Cronenberg's Crash, this is a phenomenal achievement by writer/director/actor Marina de Van and a film which is both tough to watch and utterly gripping.
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