In My Skin

In an age when movies have all but lost their power to shock, screenwriter and first-time director Marina de Van manages something extraordinary: a truly trangressive film as unsettling as it is psychologically acute. The tired axiom that you are what you eat takes on deeper meaning in the case of Esther (de Van, in an uncanny performance), an ambitious analyst for a Paris research firm, who attempts to bridge the ever-widening gap between her body and her sense of self by mutilating and eventually consuming her flesh. Esther's obsession is triggered one night at a party when, wandering about the grounds in the dark, she trips and falls. Esther doesn't realize until ...