Part of Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair
Director Gregg Araki’s MYSTERIOUS SKIN, adapted from Scott Heim’s acclaimed novel, is an intensely powerful chronicle of childhood innocence lost. The film features starmaking turns from Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Brady Corbet alongside outstanding performances from co-stars Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Lynn Rajskub and Elizabeth Shue. At the age of eight, Kansas youngsters Neil and Brian played on the same little league baseball team. Now, 10 years later, the two boys couldn’t be more different. Neil is a charismatic but emotionally aloof male hustler while Brian is a nervous introvert obsessed with the idea that he has been abducted by a UFO. When the boys’ parallel lives inevitably intersect, the pair unearth dark, repressed secrets on a harrowing and unforgettable journey of self-discovery.
(Note: Gregg Araki’s latest film, I WANT YOUR SEX, will open on Fri, Jul 31.)
“At once the most harrowing and, strangely, the most touching film I have seen about child abuse…. 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. ” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (Jun 2, 2005) “A vivid tale about the strangeness and awfulness of life…. Mr. Araki and his brilliant cast…lift it even further, into a gorgeous, heartbreaking and utterly convincing work of art. Its characters stay with you, and by concentrating on the lives of two very different young men, it seems effortlessly to illuminate a period and a milieu. To say that it is about child abuse is accurate, but incomplete. It is about the Midwest, about friendship, about the connections and disconnections between love and sex, and about a great deal more, all of it handled with clarity, simplicity and rare generosity of spirit.” —A.O. Scott, New York Times (May 6, 2006)
