The Wild Ass’s Skin
Feature Film
Writer:
Evangelo Kioussis
 nspired
by the Honore de Balzac novel of the same name, The Wild
Ass’s Skin is a film about the destructive influence
of society and wealth, and the choice between vice and virtue.
The setting is updated to a fictional, stylized modern world —
one insprired by 19th century artists’ conceptions of the
20th century. It is a world where cell phones exist side by side
with horse-drawn carriages, and disparities in class are more exacerbated
than ever.
The story follows Raphael, a young man on the verge of suicide,
who wanders into an Old Curiosity Shop to discover a piece of hide
inscribed with a message in Sanskrit — that he who owns the
skin will have any wish granted, but that each wish will cause the
skin to shrink. When the skin disappears, its owner dies. Thinking
it a hoax, Raphael takes the Skin, only to find its prophecy come
true — more literally than he’d imagined. His dreams
of wealth and love materialize, but the Skin also shrinks from his
most banal desires and Raphael finds his health deteriorating along
with it.
|
