Dans la Peau

What should have been a simple pick-up on the beach at night whirlpools into an incredible world of black-ink tattoos, red fantasies, sex and mythology.
A fable on desire, orgasm, and abandon.

This film, which flirts with the distinctions between reality and animation, proved to be a technical challenge requiring a huge amount of preparation.

As the title indicates, Under the Skin (Dans la peau), the film is first and foremost about carnality, skin-on-skin encounters. Young, beautiful, tantalizing skin which is also alive, salty, damp, sweaty.

It's an allegory of drunkenness, arousal, fantasies, of the self-abandon and wounds that the sexual act calls into play. It plays upon the multiplicity of symbols surrounding sexuality.

Paradoxical, but in no way contradictory with the upfront eroticism, comedy and drama are ever present: in the playful exploration of phallic symbols (the tattoos), the myth of the siren, by drawing parallels between the tattoos' actions and the couple's actions, not to mention the ending.

Under the Skin (Dans la peau) is far from the sophisticated, conventional eroticism used in advertising. The texture of the image is influenced by the lighting, obviously, but also by the transparence, the warmth of skin. The body is filmed without false modesty. Graphic images, but transcended by the lines of the tattoos, vibrant and shimmering.