Skin Deep 2001

Directed by Reena Mohan

Skin Deep is an exploration of body images and self perception among contemporary urban, middle class women in India - feelings of being too dark, too fat, too old that everyone experiences and attempts to come to terms with. In India, as elsewhere, a woman's identity is first and foremost an extension of her physicality, whether by societal dictates or her own complicity. The film traces the dynamics of the eternal search for the ideal femininity and how it permeates the self-image of contemporary women. Shot in the form of a "docu-feature", it recreates interviews with various women into six first-person narratives which comprise the structure of the film. It is a playful, engrossing and articulate film on women's complicated and contradictory relationships with their bodies.