Skin Deep (Aus meiner Haut, "Out of My Skin") is a 2022 film from Germany directed by Alex Schaad.
A young couple, Leyla and Tristan, arrive at a remote island where other groups of people are staying. The people on this island volunteer to swap bodies with other people. After Leyla and Tristan swap bodies with Fabienne and Mo, a married couple, they begin to explore their own identities, sexualities, and feelings for each other.
Tropes
- The Alcoholic: Before the events of the main story, Roman was an alcoholic who was rehabilitated by swapping bodies with Stella's father. While in Leyla's body, he relapses and nearly dies after a binge.
- Awkward Kiss: While in each other's bodies, Mo grabs Tristan and tries to make out with him. Tristan is not interested and resists.
- Beach Kiss: Tristan (in Mo's body) goes swimming with Fabienne (in his girlfriend Leyla's body). While resting on the shore, they confide in each other about their feelings about themselves. They then share a kiss before having sex.
- Ethereal Choir: The music playing during several scenes, particularly the ones involving body swapping or dramatic moments, contains spherical music with chanting.
- Foil: Mo and Fabienne serve as a foil couple to Tristan and Leyla. Both relationships are strained because the men don't listen to and understand the women enough. Fabienne puts it: "He is him and I am me." While the relationship between Mo and Fabienne continues to fail even after their second trip to the island, Tristan and Leyla's improves after Tristan finally addresses Leyla's feelings of depression by permanently swapping bodies with her.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: The plot revolves around several body swaps and how they challenge the two main characters' feelings for each other and about themselves. All of the swaps are voluntary, and though the swapping mechanism isn't described in detail, it involves visiting a mysterious white tower after symbolic purification in water.
- The movie opens with Stella discovering that her father is dead from an aneurysm shortly after they swapped bodies, making their exchange permanent.
- Tristan and Leyla, a young couple, are chosen by lottery to swap with Mo and Fabienne, a married couple with experience body-swapping, respectively.
- Roman is mentioned to have treated his alcohol addiction by swapping bodies with Stella's father.
- Leyla, wanting to escape her depression, swaps bodies with Roman.
- Before leaving the island, Tristan volunteers to permanently swap bodies with Leyla to make her feel better.
- Gender Bender: Male-female body swaps occur between Roman and Leyla and between Tristan and Leyla permanently.
- Grand Theft Me: Leyla, hating being in her own body, attempts to keep Roman's body permanently. While temporarily swapped with Roman, she tries to swim to the ferry as it's leaving the island, but fails and nearly drowns.
- Holding Hands: The night after Tristan rejects the sexual advances of his girlfriend Leyla (in Roman's body), Tristan and Leyla (still in Roman's body) hold hands during a Romantic Candlelit Dinner, reflecting Tristan's changing feelings.
- If It's You, It's Okay: Tristan is attracted to his girlfriend Leyla even when she inhabits male bodies, but is otherwise uninterested in sex with men.
- The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: The bodies the characters swap into have some mental effects on the people who inhabit them:
- Mo, despite not knowing how to play the guitar, is able to do so when in Tristan's body.
- Leyla, who has been suffering from chronic depression, feels happier when in any body but her own, and while they are in Leyla's body, Fabienne mentions feeling sadder and Roman, a former alcoholic, relapses.
- Scar Survey: After swimming with Leyla's boyfriend Tristan, Fabienne, in Leyla's body, asks Tristan how Leyla got the self-harm scars on her arm. Tristan answers that they were from before they met.
- Self-Sacrifice Scheme: The movie opens with Stella's father dead of an aneurysm while in Stella's body. Leyla suggests that, because Stella's father was a neuroscientist and wanted to swap bodies with Stella badly, he knew that Stella was about to die and swapped bodies to save her.
- Symbolic Serene Submersion: An early dream sequence shows Leyla peacefully sinking into deep water. Later, barely-conscious Roman (in Leyla's body) is shown sinking into the purifying waters on the island in a similar way even though Roman is really just below the surface.
- Title Card: As Tristan and Leyla approach the island, a title card listing Tristan and Leyla's names appears. For each scene with a body swap, another title card appears with their names again alongside the names of the people they're swapped with in brackets so that the viewer can keep track of who's who.
