80
Delves far more deeply into grisly physical manifestation than psychological motivation, making it seem something of an actorish vanity piece. But the drama is directed with arresting spareness and control.
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What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
75
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
The results are unsparingly perverse and oddly spellbinding.
90
Without deploying reductive backstory or simplistic psychology, this fearless movie -- easily the year's best debut feature -- illuminates Esther's pathology as an extreme response to the mind-body split.
63
New York Daily News by Jami Bernard
Even aside from the metaphorical aspect, this may be the first movie to give a precise sense of what drives people who self-mutilate.
60
Los Angeles Times by Manohla Dargis
Spectacularly grotesque and literally nauseating, even for this usually intrepid moviegoer, In My Skin is among the more disturbing films in this blood-drenched cinematic season.
67
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
An experience you won't easily shake.
70
The movie surely owes something to Polanski, Cronenberg, et al., in its use of an apparently placid, upper-middle-class setting as the background for perverse horrors, but De Van's fearless, high-wire performance is uniquely its own.
80
Makes heavy demands of even jaded viewers, who are unlikely to stomach de Van's anatomical noodling from the same curious distance. But for the brave, the film's literal journey to find the "I" inside the body moves forward with a riveting single-mindedness.
80
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
As unrelenting an exploration of isolation and dissociation as Roman Polanski's "Repulsion."
75
Needless to say, In My Skin isn't for everybody. It's recommended to viewers who, like Esther, want to feel something, no matter how distasteful.