Dans Ma Peau

Marina De Van's commentary is detailed and sophisticated and goes some way towards clarifying her objectives in making this demanding, often harrowing, film.

However, even with the benefit of the commentary, the film still treads a fine line between exploitation, in its graphic depiction of the self-mutilation of a young woman, and an artistic project that is the result of the director's genuine and devoted interest in the her chosen subject.

Yes, De Van's juxtaposition of the rule-bound world of professional conduct with an exploration of the body is executed with precision and subtlety, but her preoccupation with the stylistics of the film at times distance the viewer from the content.

She is not making a film about self-harm. She's quite explicit about this: rather, it's the examination of an individual's state of mind and relationships with others that concern her. The film has no allegiance to our counselling-culture, in which people's problems can be talked out, their causes found and rehabilitation effected.

Esther is not suffering from low self-esteem but from a post-modern body anxiety that has no cure. She's not cutting herself because she hates her physicality, rather because her body as a foreign object fascinates her. There's no resolution in the film and all we are left with is Esther's retreat further and further into herself.

The main problem is that as De Van's explanations proceed, the film comes across as being conceived more as an academic work, a thesis, which, despite the meticulousness and clear technical skill of its creator, makes questionable cinema. If anything, the wholeheartedness of her involvement in her cinematographic project only renders it more disturbing. As she plays Esther in the film, the conflation of the director with the character is inevitable, and De Van even switches (unwittingly?) between referring to Esther in the third person and the first. It's almost frightening how absorbed she is in her character.

A fascinating insight that will leave you ambivalent and generate many more questions than it answers - such as, "Does this film deserve so much scrutiny?"