OVP: The Man Who Sold His Skin (2020)

Film: The Man Who Sold His Skin (2020)

Stars: Yahya Mahayni, Dea Liane, Koen de Bouw, Monica Bellucci

Director: Kaouther Ben Hania

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best International Feature Film-Tunisia)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Film is a reflection of our life, even when it's not always an accurate one.  The movies represent a strange combination of what we want most from life & what we fear most.  One of the more interesting aspects of this in recent years has been the treatment of capitalism in the movies.  In a number of countries, capitalist structures & institutions have begun to be questioned, rightfully having workers ask "why doesn't this benefit me more?"  This has certainly been true in the United States, with the rise of political figures like Bernie Sanders & Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the national scale, who favor a form of democratic socialism.  Watching The Man Who Sold His Skin, which is about as damning of a look as I've seen in a while in how the rich can exploit misery & pain, I was struck by how universal this message has become, and am curious to see how this blistering examination of capitalism reflects in real-life politics in the years ahead.

(Spoilers Ahead) The premise of The Man Who Sold His Skin is, to be blunt, quite odd.  Essentially we have Sam Ali (Mahayni), a refugee from Syria whose fiancee Abeer's (Liane) family is forcing her to marry a wealthy man in Brussels.  Sam, desperate to find some form of financial footing & a visa to be with Abeer again, sells his body to a well-known celebrity artist, who then tattoos a visa on his back that serves as a form of conceptual art.  Sam, essentially, has given up his skin, and he soon learns his freedom, to this wealthy man so that he can be exhibited & sold as a work of art.  We get in the ensuing hour a look at the bizarre, archaic look at parts of the art market who toe the line between "progressivism" and a form of indentured servitude, which is what they thrust upon Sam in this state.

The movie is not as groundbreaking as you'd think.  Once you get beyond the truly bizarre plot points, it fits into a comfortable conversation about Sam vs. the Powers-that-be, and in that process we get a bit of a mixed message.  Monica Bellucci's Soraya feels like an empty vase.  As the movie's most recognizable actor, she is thrust to the forefront of the picture, but she is meant to represent a form of mindless capitalism while the exploitive Jeffrey gets away scot-free.  I wasn't entirely certain of the message this was sending, with the movie inclined to make us like Jeffrey but dislike Soraya (and honestly, it felt a teensy bit sexist).

But overall this is an intriguing and very watchable film.  The conversations about Sam, and what he owns, are a pretty easy metaphor to the sacrifices we all make to our employers that we aren't reimbursed for.  It might not be a literal tattoo on our back, but we give our employers are youth, our time, the best years of our lives, and that's not really what we're compensated for (or in many cases it doesn't always feel like we're getting the true value of that product).  As Millennials and Gen Z start to have a conversation questioning the values of capitalism, and what we aren't compensated for in modern culture, movies like The Man Who Sold His Skin benefit in some ways from a lack of subtlety.  The exploitation of Sam is a pretty challenging (but real) stand-in for the sacrifices we all make to larger powers who glean far more from our labors than we do.