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| Under The Skin, US poster, 2014 |
Spoilers for Under The Skin inbound after several paragraphs of travelogue twaddle.
Knowing the film was coming out during my holiday I had originally planned to see it at the local cinema. Unmentioned here, I passed my driving test last November and had my brother's car sitting free for a week. I needed to get back into the driving seat and intended to drive over there. I usually walk everywhere, being professionally adept, and also because I'm somewhat too tight-fisted to fork out however much a bus fare is these days. Whilst I like the exercise anyway and don't want to get too lazy, I didn't want to fall out of practice and have to pay my weight in gold for lessons all over again. Alas, the local cinema is seemingly too mainstream to carry this film on opening weekend, perhaps even at all. When I saw Inception there four years ago a group of young women walked out early on. I don't want to suggest they were too air-headed to get it, but I suspect they swapped screens for Sex and the City 2. I then briefly switched to an alternate plan - I'd take the car up the motorway to one of the multiplexes (multipleces?). That was abandoned on two counts: I hadn't had any experience driving on the motorway and wasn't going to dive in having only spent five minutes behind the wheel in four months driving to the shop down the street on Wednesday, and it also didn't appear to be showing at those venues. The only place it seemed to be screening was at the Cineworld in Glasgow city centre. I was beginning to think it was a limited release since the title was absent from Cineworld's homepage until Google retrieved the relevant page for me. That was the third strike for taking the car. Trying to navigate central Glasgow, or park, or even find somewhere to park as a novice was a worse prospect than hurtling down the motorway. I wasn't about to shell out for petrol and then still have to walk from a multi-storey garage to the cinema itself when it was a sub-ten minute walk from Central station. So a train journey it was.
I'm not sure if I'm good at navigating or not. My average was probably dented by that time in April 2007 I got lost in Paisley despite having a map. I simply hadn't considered I'd walk out of the North-facing exit of Paisley Gilmour and find myself half-way to the airport in a vain attempt to follow my route. The route from Central station to Cineworld appeared on the map to be impossible to get wrong - it was nine-tenths a straight line. Nevertheless, better to be over-prepared. I also made sure I had plenty of time to get there in the event that I somehow did get lost or the trains were running late. Since I had slept through pretty much all of the daylight hours of Thursday I was already fearing having to get out of bed the following morning. Believe me; I don't like wasting the day like that, I just can't help it. All it takes is a weekend off from work and I immediately lapse into going to bed at 4 or 5am. I managed to get seven hours sleep and blindly bounce out of bed for a 9.15 departure from the house. My chosen train was at 9.45 so I had plenty of time to buy The Guardian and some sweets from the shop, get money from the ATM, and finally buy the tickets. I noticed on the way my colleagues had flown out the door quite early - and people ask why I backed away from becoming a union rep.
I was kissing with Linda as Paisley came closer
When we eventually crossed the Clyde and rolled into Glasgow Central it was barely beyond 10.30. This time I was prepared to walk out of any of the three exits of the station. Normally this would be a case of always preparing for the last war, but it was really as simple as the map depicted. I walked out of the main entrance, crossed the street and turned left onto Union Street. A ten minute walk? I could see the six-storey cinema from there. I figured I needed to kill some time on account of being a fast walker. I didn't want to wander off when things were going so well so decided I wasn't going to cross on a red light like everyone around me. Frankly, the streets were busy enough I didn't need to pointlessly risk getting run over. I put down £7.10 for a train ticket to see a film 30 miles from home, I wasn't about to miss it now. I don't care if I looked moronic, I've pushed a trolley on the job - I'll be the one with functioning shoulders while my colleagues are in physiotherapy and being forced into voluntary retirement at fifty five. When I walked in firmly alive it was still only 10.45. The screening didn't start until 11.20, though I didn't know if that was the time the screen would open or the feature would actually start. It was of course the latter. After ascending five flights of escalators to get to Screen 14 I took a seat and finished off reading the paper. It's been a while since I read the Graun and I thought I recalled more commentary in it. The only really interesting columns were from Simon Jenkins and Tariq Ali both on the independence referendum. That passed fifteen minutes and I decided to enter the screen. Given the screen was blank I expected to be the first person in. Close. I was second.
Bart: Are there any jive-talking robots in this play?Considering I had been sitting in the fifth floor foyer for quarter of an hour and hadn't seen this guy walk past, I had to wonder how long he'd been there. I wondered if he might be a critic for a local publication. In the end I think he was just there to pass a Friday morning. I was nursing hope of a deserted screening since it was the opening showing and not a public holiday. That the screen was empty was purely because I was ridiculously early. The next to walk in were an elderly couple who I had to assume wandered in off the street to pass the time. I didn't have them pegged for this film. I wasn't sure if they were mental or just oblivious - I didn't think that remix of the Bond theme was catchy enough to loudly hum along to. I was fearing having to watch the film with the distraction of them rustling through three bags of snacks as the bloody adverts hadn't even started yet. Thankfully they stayed quiet throughout. If I'd known the film itself wasn't going to roll until 11.50 I'd have had a lie-in and taken a later train. As more people started to take their seats I began to feel slightly awkward. Almost everyone who walked through was an unaccompanied twenty-something male. I had this creeping feeling I had found myself in the Scarlett Johansson Full-Frontal Opening Weekend Loners' Fan Club and I was the second ranking member in desperation by time of arrival. I was trying to ignore all the talk on the IMDB salivating over the reputed nude scenes. I was relieved when a young woman sat along my row - I couldn't possibly be Travis Bickle at the porno theatre if one twenty-something female was in attendance. I tried not to be the loner going to a film on my own. I'd been angling earlier in the week on a Glasgow date via OKCupid that came to nothing. I was sure to begin with, this was going to be a male-populated screening - for some reason a story about an alien sex predator fails to attract the female viewership. Thus to the film.
Homer: Bart, don't ask stupid questions. Is there any frontal nudity?
I knew from reading about the production what it was loosely about. I knew it was based on a novel about an alien that comes to Earth as a literal femme-fatale with the purpose of harvesting young men. The details beyond that aren't necessary since this is a very loose adaptation. Before I saw it I struggled to think how the opening act would unfold given the very stripped-down aesthetic. So much as explaining Johansson's character and purpose would require some kind of exposition. Voice-over? Narration? On-screen captions? Star Wars opening plot-dump? None of that. Knowing the rough plot of the book gives you some indication of the set-up - without it, as no film should require supplementary reading material, we can work out this being is artificial in some form. The first scene is composed of what turns out to be a human eye being constructed, although at first it appears to be some kind of object passing though a gate - perhaps the vehicle in which she is transported to Earth being projected across space through a wormhole. It's ambiguous and it's very reminiscent of Kubrik's visual style as seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's also as glacially-paced as 2001. Casual viewers should be very wary of this - if you can't sit through 2001 you're going to hate this. During the opening Scarlett's voice stutters mechanically pronouncing consonants and syllables and then full words as if she's being programmed for her mission.
The film leaps down to Earth where a motorcyclist pulls up on a slip road. Parked behind him is a white van. He descends the verge and comes back up a few seconds later carrying a female body. I assume the body he retrieves from the field is a prostitute judging by the clothing. This cuts to a glowing white space in which the woman's body lies on the floor. It could be an abstract representation of the back of the van, it could be on Scarlett's spaceship. There is no ship, by the way. This is not that kind of science fiction. It's not the last time a space is depicted in this fashion. Scarlett's alien begins undressing the woman and taking her clothes. I'm sure the IMDB depserados were all getting stiffies at this first glimpse of Scarlett nude in silhouette. It wasn't all that titillating, we live in the age of easily accessible and infinitely categorised pornography. If anything, it was quite cold. The woman isn't yet dead as we see a tear roll from her eye while Johansson blankly looks over her naked body. She spots an ant crawling on her which she picks up for a close-up macro shot. I'm sure this must be an oblique reference to the novel's aliens. IMDB says Scarlett's alien is called 'Laura'. While I'm almost certain someone's made that up, I'm going to use it for brevity.
Another thing this has in common with 2001 is a definite eschewal of dialogue. In Kubrik's divisive epic the dialogue was deliberately mundane and functional. The real meat of the story was in the visuals if you could decode the language of the imagery. I like a film that makes you work to understand - I liked Inception and that wasn't up there with Primer. Nor was The Matrix, but it got people thinking for a minute.
That isn't an excuse for making a bad film, though. There's a line between making a good, thought-provoking film and making a bad one that you're trying to pass off as deeper than audiences can handle. I'm a bit on the fence regarding Under The Skin. The sparsity of dialogue brings to mind someone making their first student film that's bigger on directorial flourishes than narrative. In fact, I'll tell you what it really brought to mind. When I was six I was (still, 1993) really into Ghostbusters. My friend and I both had plastic proton packs and one morning I had the idea of writing a letter to the teacher requesting we put on a short 'play'. I think this was largely an excuse for bringing the packs to school. Unashamed as children are, my friend and I staged this alleged play in the class which must have lasted all of three minutes. I can remember we were trying to capture something. We struggled in the space cleared out for us in the room and I rolled out the trap, capturing it. I don't recall any dialogue beyond emotive grunting from our imaginary struggle. I can only imagine the bemusement of the audience.
After pulling a less grotesque Edgar from Men in Black, Laura begins her mission. I correctly guessed this motorcyclist was her minder or assistant. His role is alluded to in the principle of 'show don't tell' as he is seen repeatedly clearing up the loose ends left by Laura. I don't know who played the character, all I know is I really believed the way he moved. He really looked like something inhabiting a foreign body. There's a scene, without dialogue naturally, in which he seems to check Laura is operating correctly by walking round her in the strangest fashion, engaged in something akin to a post-modern maypole dance. Scarlett too brings this alien behaviour to the screen, in her case it's not so much physical as mental. We clearly understand the mind of a predator lurks behind her human façade as she stalks the streets of the West of Scotland, spotting a victim and beginning her act. It's this act that really reveals the character. From emotionless killer she switches personality. The window rolls down and she poses as a lost driver - a bit clueless, but so attractive. She doesn't pay much in the way of attention to the men's directions, changing the subject rapid-firing questions like a child to anything to further her seduction. As one man is pointing out how to get somewhere she spots a tattoo and asks him about it. Like the least subtle chat-up routine, she gets the relevant information from them as fast as they can answer before the next random question. Young male. Single. Not due anywhere and unlikely to be reported missing for some time. She offers a lift and once the door is shut, launches into an exchange of compliments egging him on to tell her how pretty she is. Inevitably none can pass up the chance when she suggests they go back to her place.
The very abstract style returns as she leads the men into her lair - which seems an appropriate word. As one steps through the door of a condemned-looking building, the likes of which I once had the displeasure of delivering to, the screen turns black and the scene is the inverse of Laura stripping the woman. Endless blackness is the backdrop as the men follow her, both shedding clothes. As they walk further in towards her they start to sink into some unseen substance. Like a tar pit they fall though the ground deeper and further from the beguiling semi-naked figure that led them there. Forget about any notion of her biting their heads off and laying her eggs in their thorax. If that was about the raw carnality of human sexuality, this is like a sophisticated escort quietly killing her clients and taking their money without even having to demean herself.
It's during the scenes of her picking up men that drew me out of the scant narrative. That some of them were non-actors picked up by an ad-libbing Johansson has been well-publicised. Who is and is not an actor isn't apparent, luring you into a game of analysing the performances rather than viewing them. The location was a bit distracting as the geography depicted doesn't make sense when you recognise the places and the accent was wholly distracting at times. The audience, myself included, laughed at some of the industrially-thick Glaswegian spouted by the extras. They'll have to subtitle it for America - I've already seen lines in the trailer being misunderstood online. A minor distraction for me was noting that Laura's van is an automatic transmission. I guarantee you Scarlett's licence is auto-only, as is most common in the US (says the smug novice). I just had to wonder about the rarity of an non-manual hire van in the UK. I tried to reconcile that with the story as making her stalking easier without worrying about stalling all the time.
The turning point occurs when she picks up a hooded figure during the night. The taciturn man reveals himself to have a disfigured face. Laura unflinchingly continues with her routine. She steers the conversation and tries to flirt with him, despite the obvious. In the other scenes there was a sense of fair-game as she drove off with these young men who were all too happy to follow her in expectation to their doom. With this lonely guy there's a real sense that she's preying on a vulnerable person. She lures him all the same and as she descends the stairs she spots herself in a mirror. This is held for quite some time as she looks at herself, only broken by the growing sound of a bluebottle trapped in the house banging into the window as the gloaming shines through. Though we see the disfigured man meet the same fate as the others, we subsequently see him stumbling away naked from her lair, clearly being freed like the fly. Something snapped in her mind, or in the instructional programming that forms her crude mind. For whatever reason it happened after seducing him and not earlier in the chilling scene where a baby is left to die from the encroaching waves as she drags away her victim of opportunity.
What it is that happens to these men is never very clear. The seduction of the second man concludes with him encountering the remains of the first. The way his skin hangs loose suggests he is being dissolved in an acid of some sorts, and as he drifts toward him and makes contact he suddenly pops like a balloon. His skin tumbles down drifting toward the bottom of this place-less place. The following shot of a bright red-slurry moving down a chute into a white light is very vague. Knowing the premise of the novel explains that it is the flesh that is being harvested in some fashion. Who wants it? Where does it go? How does it get there? None of it is answered. The film gets Under The Skin of Laura rather than her victims. She flees her mission as we see several men on motorbikes spread out in search. I didn't notice if they were identical which would imply they are cloned automatons sent to Earth just as Laura.
She stumbles around the Highlands lost before sitting down in a café to eat some cake. Or at least she tries to emulate the people around her. Slowly raising a slice of chocolate cake to her mouth, she hesitantly mimics the action of chewing before choking and coughing it all up. Alien in the first instance, abandoning her role has fully alienated her. The attempt to fit in is endearingly tragic. Walking down a country road without a jacket she passes a man who tells her a bus will be along shortly. Obviously distressed the man approaches her on the bus and asks if she needs help. He takes her home without sign of ill-intent, giving her a room to sleep in. Over the course of however many days she stays with him they eventually kiss. I wasn't sure who initiated it - it's pretty important as it changes the meaning of the characters. I tend toward Laura initiating it. When she looks at her body in the full-length mirror (another discrete frontal scene) she could be starting to understand the power of her form. In kissing the Samaritan, she's falling back on what little she knows of human interaction. It quickly proceeds to sex, though Laura has never actually gone beyond a striptease in luring her victims. She is, as the reviewer in The Independent put it, "shocked to discover her vagina", grabbing the lamp and examining her crotch.
Do you know what it feels like for a girl / Do you know what it feels like in this world / For a girlConfused again, she runs away into the woods. Along the path, as she marches through the trees, she bumps into a man in a fluorescent jacket. There's something suspicious about him as he talks away taking no notice of her distressed state. She comes across a hikers' shelter in a clearing and curls up, falling asleep. Suddenly she springs awake as we see an arm clad in fluorescent colours reach between her legs. The logger gives chase as she runs off back into the woods before coming across a logging truck. She tries to flee in it to no avail, possibly because it's a manual. Running again into the forest, the logger runs her down and begins ripping off her clothes intending to rape her. Not unlike Laura stripping the dying woman in the white room, now more violently her former prey is now attacking her as the snow falls. In the struggle he notices a black ooze on his hands (recalling earlier scenes in which Laura notices blood on her hands). The ooze is bleeding from cuts on her back. As she reaches round to touch the wounds her skin starts coming off like a rubber suit. The logger runs off disturbed by this. Shedding her human form, she looks into the eyes of her human façade. She was defined as a predator and shaped as one capable of luring men. Without that identity and yet still inhabiting the body, she is unable to be anything more than the sexual object she was designed to be. In trying to be something beyond that, she is nothing. The black alien figure further sheds human form as the logger returns dousing her in petrol. It goes up in flames stumbling out of the forest into a field, collapsing. The black form burns away sending a black cloud of smoke up into the air, though the falling snow into the sky. It dissolves into white and the film fades to white.
I was of mixed feelings when the credits rolled. Like the audience of my Ghosbusters play, I thought I felt some bemusement around me. One guy left before the credits during the long final shot. I'm unsure if that counts as a walk-out or whether he already knew it was going to be a long drawn out shot.
My opinion has improved while writing this, and I usually avoid other reviews before writing. I can better see some of the themes having written up the summary, though. I still think it's far too minimalist, too experimental for mainstream audiences. It's like learning to speak before you can discuss philosophy; if Under The Skin provided more context for the events on screen perhaps people could more easily grasp the subtext. I fear that might doom it at the box office, which is part of the reason I wanted to see it as soon as possible. That said; despite Hollywood accounting, home video is the gift that keeps on giving. No film can loose money these days due to the long-tail. Critical opinion of Blade Runner did a 180° turn in the decade from release thanks to a cult following on video. I hope Under The Skin doesn't sink without trace like Scarlett's victims, and I look forward to re-watching it on DVD. One thing to add, which I forgot before hitting publish, is how critical the score is to the mood of the film. The strange visualisation of the entrapment scenes stand out, but it's the music that really stays with you. Very haunting.
If I'm going to be forced to give a numerical rating, I personally give it 8/10. It isn't perfect so a ten is out of the question, and while I'd like to hand it a nine I think it has some problems even though I'm willing to overlook them. We'll see if America can prove us Euro-socialists wrong about the cognitive capabilities of "Cletus and Joanne".
[4511; 4]
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