Skin Deep: Modern German Body-Swapping

This is the mysterious island of body-swapping, but the transfers are not funny, like in Vice Versa and Big, or scary like it Freaky or Suitable Flesh, except maybe in an emotional way. A woman with undefined troubles is convinced seeing life through a different body will cure what ails her in Alex Schaad’s Skin Deep, which opens Friday in theaters.

Leyla’s friend Stella has run the weird body-swapping island resort with her father, until he died from an aneurism in her brain, during their switch. Now, she carries on, in his body. Leyla’s boyfriend Tristan was skeptical, but he agreed to try it with her, for her sake. However, his reluctance is vindicated when Mo, his body-swapper, tries to sexual assault him, while in his own body. Yet, Skin Deep helps perpetuate the stigma many male victims of sexual assault feel, by making light of his trauma. Poor Tristan even laughs along with Leyla over the incident, when he tells her about it.

Not surprisingly, Tristan wants out, but Leyla still feels compelled to inhabit another body. Even they were forced to relinquish their swap-couples’ bodies, Roman, the handyman (and the much younger lover of Stella’s late dad) agrees to swap with her, because he is miserable in any body. Of course, she is frisky in Roman’s muscular frame, but Tristan is not so sure how he feels about that, which offends Leyla, who takes it as a personal rejection.

Yes, there is “gender-bending.” Fine, whatever. The thing that is troubling about Skin Deep is the way it suggests your sense of self is defined by your physical body. You have to wonder what the disabled community would make of this film. Would they be welcomed to swap at Stella’s island? That is a question the Schaads (director Alex and his co-screenwriter Dimitrij)  have no interest in answering. Regardless, it is pretty clear Leyla and Roman would laugh at the cliched notion that “its what’s inside that counts.”

Skin Deep could have challenged the laughable notion that “all gender is fiction,” but it chickens out, basically agreeing in the affirmative, despite much of the drama suggesting otherwise. It just goes deeper down into the swapping rabbit hole until the film becomes self-parody.

Unfortunately, Jonas Dassler’s compelling work as Tristan (and the various personas inhabiting him) is wasted by the Schaads’ provocative-for-its-own-sake screenplay. On the other hand, Mala Emde never humanizes the self-obsessed and self-absorbed Leyla. Dimitrij Schaad is indeed creepy as the predatory Mo, but probably the most interesting gender-bending performance comes from Edgar Selge, who is also bending generations as Stella.

Frankly, the Schaads’ compulsive need to explore the sexual rather than ethical implications of the body-swapping is highly disappointing. Most of the time, Skin Deep feels like adult movie produced for the narrowest art-house kink. Not recommended, Skin Deep opens Friday (2/2) in New York, at the Quad.