Deerskin 2019

Georges, 44, buys a vintage fringed deerskin motorcycle jacket for €7,500 from an older man named Olaf who lives in the countryside. The seller also gives him an almost-new digital camcorder for free, a gift Georges has no immediate use for. After purchasing the jacket, he checks into a small hotel in a nearby mountainside village, and, having spent all his money on the jacket, leaves his wedding ring as collateral with the The Receptionist. He soon meets a local bartender, a young woman named Denise, and tells her he is a filmmaker in town on a shoot. Denise, an amateur editor, takes an interest in the project and in the man himself, setting the stage for what follows.

Using the camcorder, Georges begins filming the jacket and pretends that the garment is sentient. The conversations gradually drift from ordinary small talk into something unsettling. The film contains a cryptic line that lands as a cue for what might be happening on screen: > “Let’s team up. But I am warning you I am in charge.” It’s unclear whether the speaker is Georges or the jacket, and the ambiguity thickens the mood for the viewer, since, apart from the audiences, only the camera and the jacket seem to know what’s truly happening.

The next day brings a cascade of misfortune. Georges tries to use a cash machine, it fails, and he starts scavenging from a trash can while a mute boy watches. He then discovers that his estranged wife has frozen his bank account. As the story spirals, the jacket begins to speak more clearly to him, claiming it dreams of being the only jacket in the world. A path of violence unfolds when a seemingly convenient turn of events allows him to remain in the hotel, and he gains a deerskin hat, stepping closer to a full deerskin outfit that he gradually assembles throughout the film.

As Denise becomes more deeply involved, she agrees to finance and edit the project, and Georges uses the money to recruit townspeople to appear on film and surrender their jackets, which he then appropriates. A mute boy continues to appear in the background, and at one point Georges lashes out, throwing a brick toward him in a tense moment. With the jacket urging him on, Georges pushes forward, stitching together a growing ensemble of deerskin garments and continuing to film every moment.

In a pivotal turn, the jacket’s hints of murder become more direct. When a subject refuses to surrender a jacket in the cold, Georges appears to take a life, but dialogue between Georges and the jacket suggests the killing may be a fabrication of the jacket’s influence rather than a clear act by Georges himself. The jacket’s voice shifts from admiration of the camera work to a clear nudge toward murder, spurring Georges to fashion a weapon by breaking a blade off the hotel room ceiling fan and sharpening it for use. Soon he embarks on a killing spree, all captured on his camcorder.

Sleep brings the jacket back to the foreground, repeating Georges’s name as if waking him or testing his consciousness. The film cuts between Georges’s breath on the pillow and the jacket’s persistent, eerie voice using Georges’s own mouth to speak. Eventually, the victims’ jackets are buried with the help of a digger and the Backhoe Operator. In a brutal moment, Georges kills the digger operator for his jacket, and he fills the grave by hand, without a shovel.

Denise, energized by the fresh footage, offers to produce the film and uses part of her inheritance to see it finished. She reveals that she has known Georges was a fraud since they first met. After presenting him with a pair of deerskin gloves, she films him posing in his full outfit on a roadside hill. Then, from behind the hill, the mute boy’s father suddenly shoots Georges in the head with a hunting rifle. Denise continues filming as she removes Georges’s jacket from his corpse and dons it herself, layering the final twist into the story.

In a mid-credits moment, Georges films himself with his jacket as he approaches a herd of deer. Although he cannot see the image on the digital camcorder, the device zooms in twice, leaving a lingering sense of unfinished business and foreboding mystery.