On the eighth night of Halloween ... I watched In My Skin (2002), written and directed by Marina de Van, who also plays the lead.
It's one of the earliest of the New French Extremity horror films, which involve intensely intimate body horror and naturalistic narratives and acting. This is the best of them I've seen. It's very uncomfortable to watch! But quite affecting. de Van plays a marketing executive who begins to experience body integrity dysphoria after an injury. She becomes a detached observer of her own pain, and she is soon racked with sexually-charged cravings to cut pieces out of her body. The alienation she feels from her body is an extension and reflection of her alienation from herself in her role as a salaried professional, embedded in complex capitalist marketing schemes and in the sexual politics of her workplace relationships. As a result, she finds satisfaction in negating this role by taking herself apart.
This film is so focused and direct and minimal that it becomes quite painful for the viewer, which is exactly what New French Extremity horror films aim for. In My Skin manages to go further than the other, more elaborate entries in this genre that I've seen, though, with just the spare vérité of one woman's quest for psychological and physical self-disassembly.
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