Under the Skin: A Challenge To Sit Thru

New film, Under the Skin - a challenge to sit thru

By Roy Leonard

If you have an hour and forty-eight minutes to spare, I have a challenge for you. Sit through Jonathan Glazer's new film  Under the Skin and tell me what you got from the experience.

I'll share mine. Not much.

It may be an artistic achievement but it left me cold and confused.

Mysterious lady played by Scarlett Johannson

The opening of the film reminded me of those first minutes of Gravity where we see a speck of light in the distance, slowly moving toward us. This one turns out be someone's eye. It belongs to Scarlett Johansson who dominates the film with those haunting eyes and sensual lips to which she keeps applying bright red lipstick throughout the film and the shades get a darker and darker crimson. She changes clothes with the lifeless body of a woman who has been deposited in the back of a van by an unnamed man who keeps showing up in the film on a motorcycle. In one of the many curiosities in the movie Glazer's camera focuses for a few seconds on an ant crawling on the corpses' body.

Wearing a black wig and fake fur jacket Scarlett then begins her quest to search the streets of Glasgow, Scotland to find young, lonely men who willingly accompany her to dark and mysterious interiors where they both disrobe. She beckons them to come closer as they stand face to face and as she moves backwards and they try to reach her, the men are swallowed up in a black, inky substance.

Obviously, this lady is not from our planet.  Who is she? What does she want? Just a clue would help, but we don't get one. Her search, like most scenes in this movie, goes on much too long. What little dialogue there is never means much because you can't understand the strong Scottish accents.

I don' usually reveal this much of a movie's plot, by I feel you should get an idea of what you're in for.  We finally get out into the country and that leads to a couple of  different kinds of relationships and long stretches of Johansson running through the woods not knowing where she's going, falling and then picking herself up again and again and again. We have to look at the barren country side, shrouded in fog for what seems like forever before we see a face come into view. And that damn guy on the motorcycle keeps showing up.

For some reason Glazer has to draw out every scene to the point of boredom. Not having a clue as to what the climax of the movie meant, I was just glad it was over.

For its genre, Under the Skin is probably a remarkable film, but its appeal is pretty well limited to cinephiles, horror film buffs and film students. It's certainly not for the average movie goer.