 |
| Plot Synopsis Two young men are haunted by similar events from their past, though the effects manifest themselves in very different ways, in this powerful drama from independent filmmaker Gregg Araki. In the summer of 1981, Brian (George Webster) and Neil (Chase Ellison) are both eight years old and playing on the same little league baseball team in a small Kansas town. One day, after a game, Brian blacks out after getting caught in a rainstorm, and five hours later he finds himself sitting in his basement with his nose bleeding and no memory of what happened to him. Over the years, the event - particularly the missing five hours - weigh heavily on his mind, and he becomes convinced that he was kidnapped by space aliens. Teenaged Brian (now played by Brady Corbet) becomes friends with Avalyn Friesen (Mary Lynn Rajskub), a woman who claims to have been abducted by aliens on several occasions, and she urges him to look to his dreams for patterns that might suggest what happened to him. Meanwhile, during the same summer, Neil developed a powerful crush on their little league coach (Bill Sage), who appeared to have also taken a shine to Neil. Neil's mother (Elisabeth Shue), seeing nothing wrong with their friendship, lets the coach look after Neil while she's off on one of her many dates, and before long Neil begins sexually experimenting with the older man. Neil's introduction to sex inspires him to become a hustler when he grows into his teens, and after burning his bridges in his hometown, Neil (now played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his close friend Wendy (Michelle Trachtenberg) move to New York, where he continues to cruise for a living but under significantly more risky circumstances. One day, Neil is contacted by Brian, who after seeing one of their team photos from their days in little league suspects he might have some clues as to what happened to him in 1981. Mysterious Skin was based on the novel by Scott Heim, and marked the first time Gregg Araki made a film that did not originate with one of his own screenplays. - Mark Deming, All Movie Guide Reviews MICK LASALLE San Francisco Chronicle Movie Critic Friday, May 27, 2005 This is strong stuff. "Mysterious Skin" takes pedophilia, a punch line for comedians in recent months, and shows, in a sober and methodical way, its real nature and its lasting consequences. Much of it is not easy to watch. The sex is simulated, and there's very little nudity. The film is mentally graphic, not sexually graphic. It's about two little boys in small-town Kansas who join a Little League team in 1981. One boy, Neil, becomes the special favorite of the coach (Bill Sage), a cheerful and ostensibly normal guy, whose house is a child magnet, with lots of video games and sugary treats. One day, after setting up Neil for weeks, the coach makes his move -- "When I really, really like someone, there's a way I show them how I feel" -- and the boy is too confused to quite register this as abuse. He's a lonely kid, and the coach's wholehearted approval is a source of pride. Meanwhile, another teammate, Brian, a sensitive kid with glasses, has suddenly developed an unexplainable set of ailments -- nose bleeds, nightmares, fainting spells and blackouts. He doesn't know the source, but 10 years later, still suffering, he comes to believe that he may have been abducted by space aliens. These two stories, seemingly unrelated, go along on parallel tracks for most of the film. This is a much easier narrative strategy to pull off in a novel than in a movie -- the movie is based on the book by Scott Heim -- but director Gregg Araki keeps both narratives alive and thriving. Neil (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) becomes a gay hustler whose adventures eventually take him to New York. Neil has a cool, impassive way about him, but no one is cooler than New York, and his Big Apple encounters are harrowing. Meanwhile, Brian (Brady Corbet) remains in a somewhat arrested state of development, living at home and drawing pictures of aliens in a sketch pad. Inevitably, the stories come together, powerfully, but the virtues of "Mysterious Skin" go beyond the moment. The movie lingers in the mind, and there are things in it that only make complete sense upon reflection. There are also unresolved elements that are haunting. This is a serious piece of work that's even better the next day. Advisory: Strong language, simulated sex, sex abuse and violent sexual encounters ROGER EBERT June 2, 2005 "The summer I was 8 years old," a character says at the beginning of "Mysterious Skin," "five hours disappeared from my life." He remembers being at a Little League game, and then the next thing he remembers is being found hiding in his basement at home, with blood from a nosebleed all over his shirt. What happened during those five hours? And why does he continue to have blackouts, nosebleeds and nightmares for the next 10 years? This character's name is Brian, and he is played as a child by George Webster, wearing glasses too large for his face. As a teenager, played by Brady Corbet, he has grown into the glasses, but remains a shy and inward boy. He sees a TV show about a girl named Avalyn in a nearby Kansas town who believes she was abducted by aliens. He meets her, solemnly regards the scar on her leg where a "tracking device" was implanted, and when he talks about his nosebleeds she nods knowingly: "The old nose trick, so the scar can't be seen." Although Brian's narration opens "Mysterious Skin," he isn't the film's central character. That would be Neil, played by Chase Ellison as an 8-year-old and by Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a young man. He remembers Little League very well. He idolized his coach (Bill Sage), went home with him, was seduced with video games, and sexually molested. The molestation continued that whole summer, as Neil identified with the coach as a father figure, valued his importance in the coach's life and developed a compulsion to please older men. That leads him in adolescence to become a prostitute, not so much for the money as because he has been programmed that way. "Mysterious Skin," written and directed by Gregg Araki and based on a novel by Scott Heim, is at once the most harrowing and, strangely, the most touching film I have seen about child abuse. It is unflinching in its tough realism; although there is no graphic sex on the screen, what is suggested, and the violence sometimes surrounding it, is painful and unsentimental. There is little sense that Neil enjoys sex, or that he is "gay" in the way, for example, that his friend Eric is -- Eric, who likes flamboyant hairstyles and black lipstick but never seems to have sex. Then there's Neil's soul mate Wendy (Michelle Trachtenberg). "If I hadn't been queer, we would have gotten married and had kids and all of that," Neil tells us. She accepts Neil's nature, warns him of its risks, and at one point objectively observes, "Where normal people have a heart, Neil McCormick has a bottomless black hole." The film's scenes set in childhood are filled with the kinds of mysteries childhood contains, including Neil's feelings about the endless string of boyfriends brought home by his mother (Elisabeth Shue), and Brian's conviction that a UFO hovered one night over his house. In their later teen years, the two boys have no contact. Neil turns tricks at the public park, while Brian hangs out at the library and keeps a notebook of his nightmares about aliens. His friendship with Avalyn (Mary Lynn Rajskub) is based on memories of balloon-headed aliens performing weird sex probes, until Avalyn tries a weird probe of her own, which Brian is completely unable to deal with. Neil's experiences are sad and harsh, and sometimes comic, as when he has sex while stoned, and simultaneously provides the public address commentary on a local baseball game. He follows Wendy to New York, and in the early 1990s learns some things about AIDS that cause him to leave hustling for a while and test opportunities in the fast food industry. His encounter with a dying AIDS victim is sad and tender ("This is going to be the safest encounter you've ever had. If you could just rub my back. I really need to be touched"). And then there is a brutal encounter that sends him fleeing home to Kansas on Christmas Eve, and to a crucial encounter with Brian, who thinks maybe since they were on the same Little League team, Neil might remember something helpful. He does. "Mysterious Skin" begins in the confusion of childhood experiences too big to be processed, and then watches with care and attention as its characters grow in the direction that childhood pointed them. It is not a message picture, doesn't push its agenda, is about discovery, not accusation. Above all, it shows how young people interpret experiences in the terms they have available to them, so that for Neil, the memory of the coach remains a treasured one, until he digs more deeply into what really happened, and for Brian, the possibility of alien abduction seems so obvious as to be beyond debate. The film begins with their separate myths about what happened to them when they were 8 years old, and then leads them to a moment when their realities join. How that happens, and what is revealed, is astonishing in its truthfulness. There is accomplished acting in this film, and there needs to be. This is not an easy story. Joseph Gordon-Levitt evokes a kind of detached realism that holds him apart from the sordid details of his life, while Brady Corbet's character seems frozen in uncertain childhood, afraid to grow up. Both are lucky to have friends of tact and kindness: Michelle Trachtenberg's Wendy knows there is something deeply wounded about Neil, but accepts it and worries about him. And Jeffrey Licon, as Eric, becomes Brian's closest friend without ever seeming to require a sexual component; he watches, he is curious about human nature, he cares. "Mysterious Skin" is a complex and challenging emotional experience. It's not simplistic. It hates child abuse, but it doesn't stop with hate; it follows the lives of its characters as they grow through the aftermath. The movie clearly believes Neil was born gay; his encounter with the coach didn't "make" him gay but was a powerful influence that aimed his sexuality in a dangerous direction. Brian, on the other hand, was unable to process what happened to him, has internalized great doubts and terrors, and may grow up neither gay nor straight, but forever peering out of those great big glasses at a world he will never quite bring into focus. BLAKE FRENCH filmcritic.com The summer I was eight years old, five hours disappeared from my life. Five hours, lost, gone without a trace� Those are the first words spoken in Mysterious Skin, and they come from Brian Lackey (Brady Corbet), a distressed 18 year-old, born and raised in a small Kansas community. The last thing he remembers about that night is rainfall interrupting his softball game, and then waking up at home with a nosebleed, five hours later. Plagued by unexplainable nightmares, blackouts, and more nosebleeds, Brain is convinced aliens abducted him during those mysterious five hours of his youth� Neil McCormik (Joseph Gordon Levitt) lives nearby, but leads a very different lifestyle. While Brian is obsessed with UFOs and secludes himself from the rest of the world, Neil is a teenage hustler, sleeping with any local who offers him a little cash. The two may have more in common than they realize, however, because Neil was also at the softball game that night, and what happened during those mysterious five hours affected them both. Child molestation themes almost guarantee warfare with the ratings board and theater chains. Kudos to director Gregg Araki (The Doom Generation) for tackling such a taboo subject (especially given the current Michael Jackson trials) and refusing to censor the film after the MPAA slammed it with an NC-17 (it's being released unrated). Araki has the guts to push the envelope even further than recent films involving pedophilia, like L.I.E. and Happiness, while still maintaining a tasteful, artistic adaptation of Scott Heim's moving novel. Although disturbing, surprisingly, Mysterious Skin isn't gritty or unpleasant. Lush images and smooth, controlled performances contrast the bleak content, and he is careful about his portrayal of the teen hustler. The film contains strong sexuality (what did you expect from a film about pedophilia and hustlers?), but none of it is gratuitous. The story evolves through these sexual encounters, each furthering the plot a little more and becoming increasingly monumental until the final sex scene, which will have even the strongest stomachs in the audience cringing and gasping for breath. Emotionally, the film is somewhat inconsistent. While Mysterious Skin is often gripping and fascinating, at times, it is difficult to connect with the characters. For instance, when Neil and his best friend (Michelle Trachtenberg) relocate to New York City, their move is awkwardly portrayed. Yes, they want to escape from their small Kansas community, but their decision process could have used more precision and clarity on Araki's part. New York plays an essential role in the story, and their choice to move feels far too abrupt and apathetic to work. Despite the occasional bump in the road, Mysterious Skin takes some serious artistic risks. It pushes the audience out of their comfort zones without being pushy or manipulative, and journeys into a world that only the bravest of filmmakers dare to explore. This alone makes the film worth seeing. Awards Film Presented - -2004 Toronto International Film Festival Film Presented - -2004 Venice Film Festival |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
 |
| MYSTERIOUS SKIN 2004 - USA - 99 min. - Feature, Color Director -Gregg Araki |
| Genre/Type -Drama, Psychological Drama, Gay & Lesbian Films, Coming-of-Age Flags -Not For Children, Rape & Sexual Abuse, Profanity, Strong Sexual Content, Adult Situations, Graphic Violence, Nudity, Drug Content MPAA Rating -NR Keywords -child-abuse, hustler, single-parent, pedophile, sexual-abuse, alien-abduction Themes -Rape & Sexual Abuse, Haunted By the Past, Kids in Trouble, Dangerous Attraction, Prostitutes Tones -Cathartic, Confrontational, Disturbing, Sexual, Earnest, Visceral From book -Mysterious Skin Produced by -Antidote Films / Desperate Pictures / Fortissimo Films Release -May 6, 2005 (USA - Limited) Released by -Tartan Films / TLA Releasing DVD Street Date -Oct 25, 2005 Studio -Tartan Video Cast Brady Corbet -- Brian Lackey Joseph Gordon-Levitt -- Neil McCormick Michelle Trachtenberg -- Wendy Peterson Jeff Licon -- Eric Preston Bill Sage -- Coach Heider Mary Lynn Rajskub -- Avalyn Friesen Elisabeth Shue -- Mrs. McCormick Chase Ellison Lisa Long -- Mrs. Lackey Chris Mulkey -- Mr. Lackey Billy Drago Richard Riehle |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|