OSCARS 2021: The Man Who Sold His Skin (2020)

According to the press release the Academy wrote up about the decision, the Best Foreign Language Film category was re-named to Best Intentional Feature because they felt “foreign language film” was an outdated term. (This same press release also specified that documentary and animated films are eligible in the category, though I don't know if they were excluded before.) Yet the exact wording is interested too. “The Man Who Sold His Skin” is the first film from Tunisia to be nominated. Yet, it's also worth noting, that a large percentage of “The Man Who Sold His Skin's” dialogue is in English. That makes the distinction between “foreign language” and “international” more blatant, doesn't it? Though I don't know if the actual rules determining what qualifies for the category have changed any or not.

While on a bus with his girlfriend, Abeer, Syrian native Sam jokingly declares himself a radical. The government takes this seriously and expels him from the country, turning Sam into a refugee. He is forced further apart from Abeer when the Syrian Civil War breaks out and she moves to Belgium, where she quickly remarries. This is when Sam receives a strange offer. Artist Jeffrey Godefroi wants to turn Sam into a living work of art, tattooing an elaborate visa on his back. Moving people across international borders brings with it a great deal of political red tape. But commodities like art are much more easily transported. At first, Sam enjoys the freedom and celebrity but soon finds that being a living object d'art is more complicated than first assumed.

The point of “The Man Who Sold His Skin' is fairly easy to decipher. When he turns Sam into a work of art, Godefroi is ostensibly doing it to help the guy. At the same time, he's also literally reducing him to an object. Sam is forced to stand in an art gallery for hours at a time, where people come to gawk at him. This does not convey his personal experiences, the things he's seen and felt as a refugee. Instead, he's designated a price tag. “The Man Who Sold his Skin” is about how tragedies occurring in other countries are treated by people abroad. Sam is dehumanized, the much the same death tolls in foreign wars are reduced to numbers. The art world is turning his personal tragedy into commercial gain, a very literal version of wages that can be leveled at any art inspired by real life tragedy.

“The Man Who Sold His Skin” is also, in a roundabout way, something of a comedy. It has to follow the idea of a living person becoming an art commodity to its logical conclusions. This means activist protests a Syrian refugee being displayed in a museum, while Sam's feelings on the situation are more complex. While attempting to “sell” Sam, lawyers have to make sure the transaction doesn't qualify as human trafficking. This eventually gets absurd, when Sam getting a pimple threatens the valuable tattoo on his back. In its final act, the premise has to contend with the idea of someone trying to steal and smuggle this particular artwork: This human being. I have the admire the filmmakers for seeing how many different ways they could explore the ramifications of its premise.

You would think these ideas, both direct and metaphorical, would be enough to occupy the film. In its weakest moments, “The Man Who Sold His Skin” also tries to be the story of a romance. Sam still pines for Abeer. She, meanwhile, gets involved in a marriage that seems to partially be a sham. Most of the interaction between these two occurs over Skype calls, which is maybe not the most cinematic way to handle this subplot. This aspect of the story never really comes to life. Other dangling subplots, concerning Sam's mother and siblings, are also underdeveloped to a serious degree. 

Despite its flaws, I still found the central idea of “The Man Who Sold his Skin” interesting. Any film that takes an outrageous idea and then pursues its to its absurd extremes tends to win my respects. The film has received some criticism for its art world satire being shallow, being negatively compared to “The Square.” The film definitely isn't as good as that one but I still found it to be intriguing. Also intriguing: It's partially based on a true story. (Though not the story of the Japanese guy with a collection of Yakuza tattoos, skinned right off their owners. Perhaps that's a bizarre topic that also deserves a movie.) [7/10]