SKIN DEEP ignores the complications and implications of its own body swap premise
Skin Deep
Directed by Alex Schaad
Written by Alex Schaad and Dimitrij Schaad
Starring Mala Emde, Jonas Dassler, and Dimitrij Schaad
Not rated
Runtime: 1 hour 43 minutes
Opens February 1 at the Quad Cinema
by M. Lopes da Silva, Staff Writer
Leyla (Mala Emde) and her boyfriend Tristan (Jonas Dassler) travel to an island where people gather every year to swap bodies with each other. Leyla thinks that if Leyla and Tristan swap bodies with other people on the island, it will mysteriously somehow “help their relationship.” Tristan doesn’t want to swap bodies, and when he meets the guy he’s supposed to swap with, Mo (Dimitrij Schaad), he’s even less interested. But Leyla is sad – she’s a former dancer with depression – and keeps insisting that it will help “their relationship” to swap when it’s pretty obvious she just doesn’t want to do it alone. So Tristan is bullied into swapping with Mo, while Leyla swaps with Fabienne (Maryam Zaree).
Leyla has a great time being athletic and sensual in Fabienne’s body while Tristan sits around lethargically all day. One day Mo arrives while inside of Tristan’s body, and attempts to sexually assault Tristan. Still reeling from the experience, Tristan meets up with Fabienne in Leyla’s body, has sex, and then regrets it. Tristan immediately asks to get swapped back to his original body, and that reverses Leyla’s swap, too. Leyla calls Tristan selfish, and minimizes his account of attempted rape. Leyla then hops into the body of a guy named Roman (Thomas Wodianka) who agrees to let her borrow it to help “heal her depression” (I watched the film and I don’t know, either) because Roman has a reputation at being good at helping bodies heal, somehow. Although Leyla has a great time in Roman’s body, jerking off and pressuring Tristan into sex (until he eventually complies), unsurprisingly, Roman’s unclear methodology is ineffective, and without therapy or any actual medical treatment, Leyla’s body isn’t healed. In fact, Roman starts drinking heavily while occupying Leyla’s body. At this development, Leyla plots to run away with Roman’s body, and is mad at Tristan when he doesn’t support the plan.
In a film designed to showcase the talent or ability of actors embodying each other’s constructions (or playing a glorified game of “pass the person”), the plot itself is surprisingly uninterested in creating complex or compelling characters. Inner worlds and character motivations are largely absent. If Leyla is so interested in “helping their relationship,” why doesn’t she just swap bodies with Tristan from the get-go – why drag other people into it? If body swapping is a metaphor for swinging, then why isn’t consent respected the moment that someone feels uncomfortable (or if this is a critique of that space, why isn’t that discussed anywhere)? If this is truly a metaphor about transition, and not, say, an ableist fairy tale, why isn’t Tristan’s desire to transition explored? And further, why is Leyla’s desire for transition not rooted in gender, but in physical ability? Isn’t that just unexamined internal ableism?
Apathy hides in unexpected places in this story. The filmmakers bring up topics of sexual assault and ableist themes about “broken bodies” and never really seem to care to address those issues. Mo is an overt sexual predator, while Leyla is a covert sexual predator, who uses manipulation and emotional pressure to coerce Tristan into having sex. Nothing comes of this: there are no repercussions, and no conclusions are drawn about sexual assault or predation. Leyla’s body is irredeemably depressed, even when the mythical healer, Roman, is invoked. Only Leyla’s boyfriend, Tristan, is interested in preserving Leyla’s body, and the audience is unsure as to why that is aside from sexual attraction. While Leyla clearly expresses why she loves inhabiting a male body, there’s no indication whatsoever of Tristan’s desire to transition. In fact, Tristan is resistant to body swapping from the beginning. He’s doesn’t participate in swapping for himself, but for his girlfriend. He never appears to actually enjoy being in bodies other than the one he was born in. Because of this, his decision to permanently live in a woman’s body for the rest of his life seems thinly motivated at best and a sign of unexamined coercion at worst.
I wish I could take delight in Leyla’s delight when she borrows Roman’s body, but I’m actively disgusted at her eagerness to run away, leaving him trapped in a body that neither she nor he find desirable to live in. Her gleeful desire to dump dysphoria onto another human being after she knows how painful that emotion is makes her character feel like another apathetic capitalist hole: eager to consume without care or caring. And that is what Leyla’s character does: she consumes her boyfriend’s sexual trauma in a single gulp, instantly turning it into a “what about MY feelings” conversation, which is absolutely chilling. The fact that the script doesn’t treat this conversation as worthy of deeper discussion, or an outright ethical tragedy, reveals a complete disinterest in realistically exploring the sexual assault that the film brings up.
Skin Deep takes a potentially interesting metaphor about transition, then muddles it with recessive, ableist views of “broken bodies” and sexual assault that it’s unwilling to fully engage with. In an attempt to showcase what (performing) bodies can do, the film ultimately lacks heart.