Movie Type: Psychological Drama, Gay & Lesbian Films
Themes: Haunted By the Past, Rape & Sexual Abuse, Kids in Trouble
Main Cast: Brady Corbet, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michelle Trachtenberg, Jeff Licon, Bill Sage
Release Year: 2004
Country: US
Run Time: 99 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
Two young men are haunted by similar events from their past, though the effects manifest themselves in very different ways, in this powerful drama from independent filmmaker Gregg Araki. In the summer of 1981, Brian (George Webster) and Neil (Chase Ellison) are both eight years old and playing on the same little league baseball team in a small Kansas town. One day, after a game, Brian blacks out after getting caught in a rainstorm, and five hours later he finds himself sitting in his basement with his nose bleeding and no memory of what happened to him. Over the years, the event -- particularly the missing five hours -- weigh heavily on his mind, and he becomes convinced that he was kidnapped by space aliens. Teenaged Brian (now played by Brady Corbet) becomes friends with Avalyn Friesen (Mary Lynn Rajskub), a woman who claims to have been abducted by aliens on several occasions, and she urges him to look to his dreams for patterns that might suggest what happened to him. Meanwhile, during the same summer, Neil developed a powerful crush on their little league coach (Bill Sage), who appeared to have also taken a shine to Neil. Neil's mother (Elisabeth Shue), seeing nothing wrong with their friendship, lets the coach look after Neil while she's off on one of her many dates, and before long Neil begins sexually experimenting with the older man. Neil's introduction to sex inspires him to become a hustler when he grows into his teens, and after burning his bridges in his hometown, Neil (now played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his close friend Wendy (Michelle Trachtenberg) move to New York, where he continues to cruise for a living but under significantly more risky circumstances. One day, Neil is contacted by Brian, who after seeing one of their team photos from their days in little league suspects he might have some clues as to what happened to him in 1981. Mysterious Skin was based on the novel by Scott Heim, and marked the first time Gregg Araki made a film that did not originate with one of his own screenplays. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
With its complicated plot, multiple unreliable narrators, and subtle interplay between fantasy and reality, Scott Heim's Mysterious Skin doesn't seem like an easy candidate for cinematic adaptation. But alt-pop auteur Gregg Araki has fashioned the novel into a mournful, lyrical rumination an lost innocence, abandoning only a few nuances along the way. Continuing to erase memories of his embarrassing sitcom past, Joseph Gordon-Levitt completely inhabits the role of Neil McCormick, a gay hustler forever haunted by the purity of his childhood relationship with a handsome baseball coach. Brady Corbet proves equally compelling as Brian Lackey, a UFO-obsessed college student with very different memories of his Little League days. The facts lie somewhere between Neil's hard-nosed cynicism and Brian's damaged flights of fancy. But Araki is more interested in the emotional truth of these boys' experiences -- the way their individual coping mechanisms protect them from a shared past even while endangering their divergent futures. The director's previous films revelled in an overstuffed visual aesthetic, but here, with the help of cinematographer Steve Gainer, he fashions an entire world of forlorn childhood nostalgia and haunted suburban spaces. Araki's casting, impeccable as ever, allows talents as disparate as Elisabeth Shue, Mary Lynn Rajskub, and Michelle Trachtenberg to contribute to his remarkably consistent vision. Audiences put off by the bratty pop excess of Araki's earlier films may not recognize the mature filmmaker of Mysterious Skin. But fans will have glimpsed this film's heartbreak before, beneath the candy-colored surfaces of Nowhere and The Doom Generation. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Mysterious Skin is a 2005 film directed by AmericanfilmmakerGregg Araki, who also wrote the screenplay based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Scott Heim. The film is Araki's eighth, premiering at the Venice Film Festival in 2004, although it was not more widely distributed until 2005. Mysterious Skin details the lives of two young boys who are sexually abused by their baseball coach.
Neil, whose homosexuality manifested at an early age (he was preoccupied with male models depicted in his mother's Playgirl magazines), interprets the coach's abuse as an initiation into sexuality. He becomes sexually compulsive, particularly attracted to middle-aged men. Eventually, Neil drifts into petty crime and becomes a prostitute. Brian reacts to the abuse by developing psychogenic amnesia and forgetting the events, for many years suffering from violent nose bleeds. In his teen years, Brian becomes a quiet, withdrawn, nearly asexualnerd. Strange, unsettling memories in recurring dreams lead Brian to suspect that he and another boy may have been abducted by aliens.
While trying to untangle his confused memories at 19 years of age, Brian sees a photo of his childhood baseball team, recognizing a young Neil as the boy from his own bizarre dreams. Eventually, the two young men meet for the first time in over a decade, uncovering the secrets they share as well as beginning to heal one another.
To protect the young actors playing the parts of the abused children, scenes with the children were shot separately from other scenes. Araki has said, “Chase and George had separate scripts from the rest of the cast”. The scenes were then later edited to give the appearance of the abuse happening to the children; however, the abuse is not explicitly depicted.[1]
Reception
The film received extensive critical acclaim, with an 83% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.[2]
According to psychologist Richard Gartner,[3] the novel Mysterious Skin is an uncommonly accurate portrayal of the long-term effect of child sexual abuse on boys.
The film has been the subject of some controversy in Australia, where the Australian Family Association requested a review of its classification, seeking to have the film outlawed due to its depiction of pedophilia. They suggested that the film could be used by pedophiles for sexual gratification or to help them groom children for sexual abuse.[4] The six-member Classification Review Board voted four-to-two in favour of maintaining an R18+ rating. The controversy is referenced in a review excerpt from the Sydney Morning Herald on the Region 4DVD that reads: "How anyone could have wanted it banned is beyond me".[5]
