In My Skin
Director: Marina De Van
Year Released: 2002
Rating: 2.0
Self-flagellation taken to its absolute extreme - an opportunistic businesswoman comes to enjoy (savor, even, like a delectable meal) the grotesque leg wound she experiences while wandering through a yard full of scrap metal and then makes more incisions in her skin later on, in privacy, saving the dissected pieces. Might be easily dismissed as sensationalistic fluff since there isn't much substance aside from the pleasurable torture - in fact, De Van goes out of her way to make it a showcase for agony without any easy answers; she eliminates easy psychology - but is also too unsettling and stylized to write-off as something that has no merit. Reminds me of the similar Trouble Every Day (where the cannibalism is symbolic) and the work of American artist Vito Acconci ... but I think it was actually Karen O. of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs who said it best: "It's a nightmare, this modern life."
