I have always thought that the “body-swapping” theme is actually not something funny at all, but a pretty traumatic experience. But until now, I have mostly had to watch films like The Hot Chick and Freaky Friday in this genre, and I always thought this subject wasn’t explored enough. Of course, there are a few films that have tried to take the subject seriously, but I don’t think any of them have approached it as darkly as French director Arthur Harari. I can’t help but wonder if Harari also thought that this subject wasn’t being taken seriously enough. He probably did, and then turned that idea into a film as static as Under the Skin, putting questions of existence, identity, and the loss of identity at its center and treating them with the seriousness they deserve.
The film opens with David Zimmerman, a photographer living in the suburbs of Paris. David is a withdrawn man approaching his forties. He makes a living taking photographs at events, but his real job is documenting the city’s changing streets over the years. He doesn’t leave the house very often. One night, his friends take him to a chaotic party. At the party, David notices a woman standing in the crowd. She calls him outside and they have sex. David passes out. The next morning, he wakes up in his own home and, when he looks in the mirror, he doesn’t see his own face. He is in the body of the woman he met at the party. Her name is Eva. David now has to live with Eva’s body, voice, and face. He tries to return to his old life, but nobody recognizes him as David.
David starts investigating who Eva is. He remembers seeing her as a waitress at his family’s anniversary dinner. At the same time, he finds his own old body. But Eva isn’t inside it. There is a woman named Malia inside it instead, a young woman in her twenties who has gone missing. Malia has gone through something similar. After a relationship she had at a festival, she ended up in someone else’s body. From this point on, the film follows the shared desperation of these two people. David is in Eva’s body, while Malia is in David’s body. They both realize that they can no longer return to their old lives. They get close to their families, but nobody recognizes them. David visits his mother, but she doesn’t know that the person standing in front of her is her son. Malia, meanwhile, watches her own family from a distance and cannot tell them who she really is.
Later in the film, David learns that the body he is in is pregnant. This makes the already complicated question of identity even bigger. The characters begin searching online for other people who have also swapped bodies like them. It is never made clear where the chain started, where Eva’s mind went, or whether any of this can be reversed. The film never gives a scientific or magical explanation for what is happening. David and Malia never get their old bodies back. They remain outside their own lives, and the story ends in that uncertainty.
I usually argue that films dealing with supernatural and complicated events like this should give us a clear explanation of what happened and shouldn’t end at such an ambiguous point. But apparently, Arthur Harari has no interest in explaining things, and I choose to respect that. He gives us some questions to think about, lets us spend two hours witnessing what these characters are going through, and for him, that’s where the matter ends.
Honestly, I didn’t think I would like a film like this. To be fair, I could criticize its not particularly brilliant screenplay and the fact that it doesn’t make enough use of the opportunity to explore deeper subjects, especially when it has something like pregnancy at its disposal. But Léa Seydoux’s wonderful performance, which you can’t take your eyes off, the great cinematography that makes almost every scene look like a photograph, and the atmosphere and world-building that completely immerse you in the world you’re watching make all of this feel somewhat unimportant at some point. I don’t really feel like criticizing the film too much. I simply choose to enjoy what I watched.
