Mysterious Skin

Gregg Araki, USA, 2004, 99 minutes

Neil McCormick (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a teenage hustler idolised by his friends Eric (Jeffrey Licon) and Wendy (Michelle Trachtenberg) but haunted by the summer he was molested when he was eight years old.

In the same town, Brian Lackey (Brady Corbett) is attempting to find the source of his mysterious fainting spells, nose bleeds and blackouts. After watching a documentary on alien abduction he becomes convinced that he too has been abducted, and makes contact with another abductee, Avalyn Friesen.

When Avalyn encourages Brian to research the identity of the other boy that appears in baseball uniform in his recurring dream, he discovers Neil. As Neil has embarked for New York, Brian instead befriends Eric, another of Araki's perfectly depicted subcultural style icons, who nonetheless accepts Brian's oddities and delights in offering innocent corruptions, such as an illicit beer on Brian's birthday. We know their friendship is becoming close when the immaculately made-up Eric - he of the perfect eyeliner, tweedy fedora and the skin of a Persian prince - presents the geeked out Brian with a blue and beige cardigan. Traditionally, only women seem to give each other gifts in this way, carefully choosing a gift that will reflect their friend's style, not their own. Araki shows Eric (who is gay) presenting his straight friend Brian with a thoughtful gift, which Brian appreciates. Their friendship is presented without deception or an undercurrent of sexual tension, merely the companionship of two unusual people who accept one another. Eric is not secretly in love with Brian, nor is Brian secretly repulsed by the knowledge that Eric is gay.

Meanwhile, at Wendy's insistence, Neil has joined her in New York, where he makes more conquests and - more crucially - is introduced to the many facets of the cosmopolitan gay community. One particularly memorable client is Zeke, an elegant urbanite with the beautifully ravaged face of an aging Warhol superstar. Increasingly concerned about Neil's cavalier attitude towards picking up johns, Wendy begs Neil to get a regular job. Just before Christmas, Neil makes an effort to turn over a new leaf, but he is unable to resist the lure of a john's warm car on his bitterly cold walk home, with terrifying results. When he returns home for Christmas, Eric and Brian are waiting for him. After a harrowing experience with his last john, Neil seems to have realised that Wendy's accusation that he is emotionally empty has some truth. In an attempt to makes amends, he sets out to reveal the truth to Brian. This is an honest, tender film that attempts to imagine how we process trauma as children and adults. Araki is one of the few directors who seems truly capable of making mature films about teenagers. Unlike teen dramas such as The O.C., Araki's teens are not sophisticated adults with better skin and flat stomachs, instead they struggle with the achievement of maturity and independence that feels far closer to one's own real experience. Araki doesn't mock the intensity with which his characters feel, dress, and live, which is perhaps where he differs from those who imagine the teen years as a kind of glossy soap opera.

As a director, Araki has an agenda about depicting what he sees as the extremes of sexual freedom and possibility. In Araki's world, sexual fluidity can result in intense pleasure or it can lead to horror. Araki also frequently depicts the fluids that result from sex on screen in his films, and his subtle incorporation of this element into certain scenes in Mysterious Skin may shock some viewers. Araki also adores the young male torso to such an extent that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is postively transformed as Neil, leaving behind this previous television role as Tommy Solomon on Third Rock from the Sun to join the ranks of Araki pin-ups like James Duval (Totally Fucked Up, Nowhere, The Doom Generation). Interestingly, Gordon-Levitt's previous visibility as a young actor provides a kind of frisson to his role in Mysterious Skin. Despite the fact that he is not a 'star' in the traditional sense, Gordon-Levitt's previous televisual image is embedded in many viewers' memories, making the scenes of flashback all the more disconcerting.

Review by Sarah Artt
Written for EUFS Programme Spring 2006