Laura U. Marks

The Skin of the Film traces a many-layered thesis through an extensive web of visual works. Marks argues “that many new works in film and video call upon memories of the senses in order to represent the experiences of people living in diaspora” (xi).

In order to prove her hypothesis, she comments on hundreds of films and videos in vivid detail. Making these texts “vivid” is crucial for Marks because most readers will have only seen a handful of these films. For example, in order to explain the synaesthetic process of sensing, Marks delves deep in the content of The Scent of the Green Papaya (Tran Anh Hung, 1994):

The main character is Mui, a young woman who travels from the country to Saigon to become a servant in a prosperous household. Mui takes pleasure in her sensuous connection to her daily work. When she cuts open one of those papayas, the image and sound, tied to her perspective, convey the slight effort of her knife and the wetness of the translucent seeds under her fingers. Frequent close-ups (with closely miked sound) linger on the papaya leaves dripping with rain, frogs plopping in the small pond, and ants tortured by the young son of the house, engaging the viewer’s recollective imagination of the cool smell of rain and the harsh sizzle of a burning insect. Unconnected from any character’s point of view, the camera seems to drift along currents of odor as it moves smoothly between the interconnected spaces of the courtyard, where the servant women prepare meals, and the cool dim rooms of the house. (222)

Marks draws on Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Henri Bergson, and many other film theorists. The Skin of the Film is a significant contribution to knowledge in the realm of film theory and analysis.