trashgang
I would not say that what I just have seen is a real horror. I would call it drama with a little sickening horror twist. I can believe that it isn't for everybody. It was made one year before Haute Tension, the start of the French sickies. The storyline is simple. A simple and normal girl has no problem at all until at a party she falls in a bunch of metal things. She won't make any notice of it and parties on before going to a hospital. There she got the news that she came too late to heal it properly. She has to go under surgery but she doesn't want it. But she becomes obsessed with her wounds. The feeling in her leg goes away and she starts cutting herself until things really go wrong with her. Horror geeks will have a problem with the movie due the reason that they talk a lot, typical for French movies. And drama geeks will cut away once she will go wild on her wounds. So it's up to y'all to watch it. But if you want to see the evolvement of French sickies then you better watch it. At the end of the day, if you liked Cutting Moments than this is your piece of cake.
joysette
As a mental health researcher, I'm always intrigued by movies that display pathology. So when people start doing things that are not explained by an underlying mental disorder, I get confused. Perhaps because of the translation (or a poorly written story), I just didn't see what her underlying reason was for her self-mutilation. I thought maybe it was something akin to Body Dysmorphic Disorder (evidenced by seeing her disconnected hand on the table at the business dinner). I couldn't quite understand what was going on with her, and I would have liked to see some reasoning for her pathology.Unfortunately, lacking any sort of character driving force, this movie seemed like an excuse to shock the audience with something on the edge of disturbing and taboo. Because of the lack of character development, it seemed simply to be an exercise in exhibitionism, which certainly dampened the effect of the film.
Kris_b
Throughout this film i couldn't help but be reminded of American Psycho, both the book and the film. The stories share the exact same overriding theme; the complete and utter emptiness and shallowness of their social and thus emotional landscape leads the protagonist to extreme and violent depths in order to find something that makes them feel anything.The scene that really stuck out and made this clear for me was the dinner scene. Sat with her wealthy, pretentious work peers or 'friends', discussions include such fascinating topics as 'which city in the world has the best architecture?', which leads one of the group to propose Paris, and then enter a long monologue on why; 'architecture that is so beautiful, but most importantly, consistent' (paraphrased). Just one sound byte of an entire scene of conversation that hemorrhages vapidity and blandness. Meanwhile Esther, in the midst of this, struggles to control her urge to self-harm - and begins cutting herself beneath the table.In American Psycho, it was this same vapidity and emptiness of his world that lead Patrick Bateman to experiment with murder and extreme violence. In Dans Ma Peau, we see the exact same, but this time that same primal urge to violence that seems to be awakened in their emotionally desolate worlds, is turned inwards instead of out.Both films seem to suggest that the combined emotional effect of vanity and superficiality creates an emotional gulf that only violence can fill, be it inwards or outwards.
Ata-2
This is a movie made with the confidence of one who knows exactly what she is trying to communicate. The problem is that what is being communicated is so far beyond the norm that it is not going to be easily grasped. Esther is a highly intelligent young woman. The main thread of the story begins when she accidentally injures herself. Through the injury she begins to see her herself as merely meat, an object. Meat can not suffer, has no emotions, has no ambitions, is immune to the pressures and pettiness of everyday life. She finds this release increasingly more fascinating and attractive. This is not something she can communicate to anyone around her so she explores it in secret attempting to finally exist as a mere object devoid of all humanity. Her loneliness adds a cutting edge of sadness to the story. If she found the right person to share her thoughts with we may have ended up with an equally bizarre love story.I found it difficult to watch this movie all the way through without a break. Some of my friends have not even managed to watch it past the first twenty minutes. If you do manage to sit through this movie, I am pretty sure that not only will you thereafter remember it vividly, you will also find it hard to stop talking about it.
AD
