A frail, wiry figure with a crew cut, a button-down shirt and tie, and a pair of tennis shoes that flash at every step, Bernard Blancan enters Skin Of Man, Heart Of Beast like an innocent man-child, and exits like Frankenstein revisited. The only indication of his darker nature comes when he opens his mouth, revealing a set of teeth that look like the gnarled Black Forest in a children's fable, and serve the same function. In French director Hélène Angel's chilling debut, the two extreme ends of Blancan's personality—vulnerable and menacing, usually at once—act like a mood ring for his immediate family, shifting in response to its unsettling dynamic. Posed somewhere between a fairy tale and harsh reality, the film pulls off a daring feat by turning Blancan into an almost abstract monster as a way of getting into the deeply unhealthy situation that created him. In many ways, the real villain of the story is Blancan's older brother (Serge Riaboukine), a hyper-masculine brute who arrives at the family's pastoral home after being suspended from the Marseilles police force following the breakup of his marriage. Though he wears a telltale brace around his wrist, the incident that led to his dismissal is never mentioned, but his propensity to drinking, womanizing, and violence offers some obvious clues. Though Riaboukine's two daughters, a battle-weary preteen (Virginie Guinand) and a sweet 5-year-old innocent (Cathy Hinderchied), are a little uncomfortable with him, his behavior isn't questioned by his passive mother (Maaike Jansen) and his quiet younger brother (Pascal Cervo). But Blancan's appearance after a 15-year absence, and his unconvincing claim that he'd been serving in the Foreign Legion, sets an inexorable series of events into motion, leading to horrific physical and emotional violence. Told largely from the children's perspective, Skin Of Man gets a few cheap shocks from its kids-in-peril theatrics, but it also taps into the primal fears of young people trying to cope with the mysterious and brutal nature of adults. Never is this more evident than in a brilliantly understated dream sequence in which the older daughter imagines a family dinner where she and her sister are served as the main course. For all the film's overt brutality, Angel seems more concerned with the psychological trauma; by sticking to the children's point of view, she forces the audience to experience feelings that aren't always readily apparent. In Skin Of Man, violence bonds as strongly as love, and dark impulses course through a family like toxins in the blood.