Whatever psychological aspects In My Skin may possess, I'd argue that they're merely a clever subterfuge for a skillful shocker with little intent other than to make the veiwer squirm. It's the kind of movie that you can go to and find great enjoyment in listening to the audience gasp in dismay or giggle uneasily, unless of course you get caught up in doing the same.

The film is from Marina de Van, a French writer who has provided the screenplay for several of Francois Ozon's films. This is her directorial debut, and she stars in it too. She plays Esther, a thirty-ish woman who, as we meet her, is successfully climbing the corporate ladder. She goes to a company party with her friend Sandrine (Lea Drucker) and takes a stroll in the dark, spacious front yard, where she stumbles over some stray garden tools. Later, she goes to use the bathroom and discovers bloody footprints on the carpet. Her curiosity piqued, she traces them back...to herself. She discovers, with little ado, that her previous traipse in the garden has left with her with a rather grotesque, oozing gash in her leg. She washes it off and returns to the party. Later that night she casually stops by an emergency room and has the wound sewed up; the doctor can't figure out why she couldn't feel it, since it's serious enough for him to recommend skin grafts.

The next day at work, Esther finds her mind drifting to the stitches in herleg. In a moment of inspiration, she runs to a storeroom and removes the bandages and gouges a few more cuts into the viscinity of the original wound. Excited by the sensation, she tells Sandrine what she's done, and is confused when she expresses fear and disgust. Esther herself can't quite explain what compelled her to do it -- she's not depressed, as her boyfriend Vincent fears; it was just a momentary urge.

It is an urge that, of course, proves as uncontrollable as it is inexplicable. Before too long, she's cutting herself again, and soon that gives way to gnawing, and, later still, chewing and swallowing. In My Skin comes on the heels of the shocking news story about the German cannibal who killed and ate a man who was perfectly compliant in his desire to do so; such extreme fetishes are hard to comprehend, and at first one might think Van's modus operandi here is to find empathy and maybe even sympathy with someone impelled to take such drastic measure.

I don't think that's the case. The film has all the trappings of an exploration of a depraved mind, so that those looking for deeper meanings can have something to delve into, but it's also rather truncated in that same department, coming to an end once the shock value has run out and leaving the character of Esther a complete enigma. Perhaps it simply is a failed character study, but I think Van is too smart for that; I think she simply wanted to make a very unnerving black comedy that would freak people out. If you look at the way she stages the mutilation scenes, you can see the delight of someone who knows perfectly how to manipulate an audience; we never completely see her doing any significant damage to herself, but we sure think we do. The principal behind the shower scene in Psycho is at work here, and if you love the idea of being titillated to such extremes, you'll probably forgive this film its dramatic faults.