If any story has been inescapable this century, it's surely immigration. The subject has spawned so many newscasts, books, movies and TV shows that it takes real imagination to find an invigorating angle on such a well-worn and difficult theme.
That's why I was surprised and delighted by The Man Who Sold His Skin, a funny, touching and pointed film that's been nominated for the Oscar for Best International Feature. Made by the Tunisian writer-director Kaouther Ben Hania, it weaves together satire and humane political awareness to create an original fable about art, privilege, freedom and identity.
The winning newcomer Yahya Mahayni stars as Sam Ali, a handsome young Syrian madly in love with his girlfriend, Abeer (Dea Liane). But when Sam's thrown into prison by the Assad regime for a trifle, he's forced to escape to Lebanon. He's burning to get to Belgium where Abeer has moved with the Syrian diplomat she's been married off to, but he can't get a visa.
Sam's situation seems hopeless until he sneaks into an opening at a Beirut gallery hoping to sponge free food. Once there, he's caught by a glamorous art-dealer who introduces him to Jeffrey Godefroi, an internationally renowned artist played by Belgian star Koen De Bouw. Jeffrey specializes in glib work that sells for millions and seems to embody Oscar Wilde's definition of a cynic as one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Over drinks, Jeffrey proposes a deal that will let Sam get to Abeer. Using Sam's back as his canvas, Jeffrey creates a large tattoo depicting the Schengen Visa, the document that allows free movement between European countries. In exchange, he gives Sam a cut of the profits and — because Sam is now a pricey work of art — gets him into Belgium. There Sam spends his time being displayed in a museum and looking for Abeer. He finally appears to be free.
Of course, when someone says he's the devil and offers you a contract, the word "Faustian" does come to mind. Even as Jeffrey delivers everything he promised, Sam's supposed freedom finds him being pinballed in crazy directions. Among the forces pulling him are Abeer's belligerent husband, bossy museum directors, vulgarian art collectors, internet trolls, Syrian refugee groups who want to use him as a symbol, and his mother back in the war-ravaged city of Raqqa, whose travails will leave him gutted and ashamed.
While The Man Who Sold His Skin is a good film, it's not flawless: The motivating love story is a bit conventional, the plotting a shade too pat. Yet the movie is admirable in its slyness and tact. Ben Hania has a light touch. She leaves us to notice the visual similarities that link Sam's time in prison and the gallery world. Neatly evading the commonplaces about mistreated immigrants, she wittily gives us a refugee who feels himself trapped in his life of 5-star hotels and room service caviar.
Now, in real life, the Belgian artist Wim Delvoye actually did tattoo a man named Tim Steiner, turning him into a work of art. In Ben Hania's hands, that gimmicky conceptual idea takes on a richer meaning. It's not simply that Sam becomes a commodity, but that by becoming a commodity, he has more rights. As an asylum seeker, he can't get into Europe, but as a piece of artistic merchandise he can. He has more value in the prosperous West as an object than as a man. As such, Sam becomes a metaphor for how immigrants become objects defined by the meanings we impose upon them rather than by the ones they would make for themselves.
In the end, The Man Who Sold His Skin is all about Sam attempting to stop being an object and start being a man who writes his own story rather than having it told for him by a tattoo on his back.
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