Archive for August, 2008

The story of Mysterious Skin follows two teenage boys living in small-town Kansas: Brian, a clunky and awkward fellow with no discernable social life; and Neil, a rebellious gay youth whose fragile beauty and cruel indifference make him a successful hustler to the area’s older men. Having suffered from blackouts as a child, Brian believes that these voids were actually alien abductions, and goes on a quest to confirm this. As his memories become increasingly vivid, Brian convinces himself that Neil, the star player on his childhood Little League team and a regular presence in his dreams, knows the truth. Neil does, in fact, know exactly what happened: the boys were sexually abused by their Little League coach. While Brian has suppressed the incident, Neil has held it deep within him like a treasure, considering it to have been a loving relationship of respect and tenderness, the absence of which has left him emotionally empty. The two strands of narrative are braided together elegantly, slowly leading up to a devastating final scene. Director Araki unifies the stories through an elegiac, celestial tone that manages to avoid preachiness via doses of appropriate humor.

The performances are extraordinary, pulsing with veracity and a bitter sweet naturalism, painful and profound. Savage in its depiction of Neil’s gay hustling encounters, graphic in its revelations of the inner pain inflicted on its characters and unflinching in its closing resolution, the film is a riveting original that some may find almost too agonising to experience. – Urban Cinefile

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