Under the Skin (2014) dir. Jonathan Glazer

i'm not really sure glazer completely knows what the motorcyclist is, represents or is supposed to be. i don't really have a problem with that but i can see why most people would.

(book spoilers) In the Michel Faber novel, the main character's only responsibility is identifying well-muscled hitchhikers who won't be missed, and sedating them in the passenger seat. There's another human-appearing alien managing her, and the coastal farm where the fattening and meat processing takes place, as well as numerous untransformed aliens in underground warrens doing the work. The movie is much superior for getting away from the vegan parable.

Ah thanks, that makes sense. I don't have a problem with it Jed, I was just wondering if I'd missed something. In fact, I thought the idea of the mysterious motorcyclist worked rather well. It added pressure to her storyline, knowing she was being searched for probably. Without that counterpart she wouldn't be 'stuck' between humans and aliens. He at least made it clear to us that she wasn't a solitary alien on earth, but rather part of some sort of organisation. Which, for me, made her distress at the end even more palpable.

Think Glazer did well to effect an incredibly nuanced reworking of the book (which had all the abandon of a first novel as well as being defiantly Sci-fi), and created the most amazing externalisation of the abject psyche in Under the Skin. The heterotopic cesspit in which SJ's victims are assimilated is the border between life and death - living cadavers come to encroach upon our earthly boundaries, bringing us face to face with the most brutal reminder of ourselves. In fact, I'm just paraphrasing Kristeva now...

For some light new year's day reading, this essay is basically the perfect companion to this film (and is a truly wonderful piece of writing): http://seas3.elte.hu/coursematerial/RuttkayVeronika/Kristeva_-_powers_of_horror.pdf

I thought the cyclist was just sort of the male expression of this species. Like, the females do one thing and the men do another, like spiders or something. Not really sure what they are up to on earth. Stranded? Invading? Is the house alive? Is there more than one house? I love all the ambiguity.

I liked this a hell of a lot and more and more each time I think about it. I thought Scarjo was amazing. The beach scene was so horrible. I almost yelled, "but the baby!". I think EIII otm regarding the bloody rose and her falling scenes in terms of her developing a sense of compassion. "One plot question though: the motorcyclist, is he supposed to be her 'employer' or alien overlord? He sets her up with a 'skin' in the beginning, and when she 'flees', or isn't delivering the goods, he rides around looking for her." I kind of thought that's what he was. They were a team doing their people snatching thing and she was the bait and he was sort of taking care of things she messed up (the guy she let go) and trying to find her when she went off. This made me want to go to Scotland again. And buy some acid washed jeans.

Finally got around to seeing this and as a recent first-time parent found the beach scene to be the most disturbing/upsetting sequence I've ever seen.

being a parent especially a new one really pays in spades when it comes to some movies and news stories

xp
Your are probably best avoiding Finding Nemo as well.

Dang, everyone's so weepy about the baby scene! Maybe someone came by and saved the baby!

Yeah. Sure.

it is weird - I do find myself being more affected by certain types of scenes, post-parenthood. Infant-related stuff not so much (I don't really have a hard time divorcing scenes with infants from reality), but certain things about parents relating to their kids and vice versa can really affect me.

The beach scene *really* upset my wife.

oooh, just found out one of my friends is playing drums for this:
http://www.theregenttheater.com/event/722411-screening-under-skin-wild-los-angeles/

How can anyone care for the baby when the poor dog's drowning horribly beforehand?

the entire situation was the stupid dog's fault, iirc

pulling some kind of reverse-Lassie

Dog was part of the alien team.

Maybe some other enigmatic alien swooped by to harvest the baby.

There's a bonus disc in the DVD set that features several hours of the baby at home with its new parents, who are more supportive and loving than its previous parents.

Oh good that's a relief. Does the DVD indicate whether the child would go on to suffer adverse effects from the beach scene in later life?

The baby was taken to the Snowpiercer train.

dog lovers shd avoid The Babadook btw

good to know, my gf was already reticent and now i know never to watch it in my house.

there's v obvious foreshadowing, so obvious I couldn't believe it when fulfilled.

there's v obvious foreshadowing

As in, if there's a dog in a horror movie, and that dog has a name, chances are it is doomed?

well i don't see many horror movies as it's the worst genre for that and other reasons

Morbs, if you see a dog in a horror movie, and that dog has a name ...

lol @ calling horror the worst genre

can't believe i took so long to get round to this. incredible film. was utterly absorbed at every moment and wished it wouldn't end - love films where you're in this bubble of seeing the world differently, it feels disorientating coming back to reality.

what did SJ do with the body of the czech guy whose head she bashed in? take him back to eat as well? all her other victims were lured into the black pool alive, but would clubbing them over the head beforehand work just as well?

have to say i found the baby beach scene more blackly comic than remotely horrifying, i was more distressed about the poor dog. actually, that's not quite true - i felt dispassionate during it, as i felt dispassionate towards SJ's sundry victims, because you're not just seeing ~ordinary glasgow through an alien's eyes but with her emotional disinterest too. again, a bit like a bubble.

i was glad i had a passing acquaintance with glasgow, enough to recognise places but not so much that it was distracting.

as much as i didn't want that ending, i appreciate not going the route of suddenly giving the alien powers - her fear and flight from the rapist was when she became human, as vulnerable as a human, after failing to become so with human pleasures.

the motorcyclists (who increased in number as she went off piste, right?) reminded me of buzzing drone bees trying to recapture an errant queen...

would LOVE to see the footage they couldn't use, if there was any disappointment it was that there didn't seem to be that many SJ/ordinary glaswegian scenes. presumably the guys she actually got back to her lair were actors, though if they managed to get a random off the streets to get hard on camera, kudos to all involved i guess

oh yeah and i loved the scene where she got swept into the club by the posse of girls! what club was that, glaswegians? (also what club would be playing "sandstorm" in this decade...)

A long long time ago in a galaxy far away ....

"the motorcyclists (who increased in number as she went off piste, right?) reminded me of buzzing drone bees trying to recapture an errant queen..."

I didn't think they increased in number. I thought it was just the same one guy the whole way through. I need to watch this again because I'm still thinking about it two weeks later.

Months on, this is the movie of 2014 that's probably haunted me most. Images from it just pop into my head sometimes. Is the book worth reading? I understand it's quite different. Would having seen the film diminish reading the book?

I keep getting images too. And I keep thinking about the scene where they start to have sex and she examines her vagina and then how she's woken and exposed by the rapist logger and what that means etc. The final image keeps popping into my head often.

I didn't think they increased in number. I thought it was just the same one guy the whole way through.

i def recall a scene where there were four?

i'm still thinking about it too

yeah there were more motorcycle people at the end, good catch

God, I totally missed that!

Would having seen the film diminish reading the book?

Nah I don't think so, they're very different aside from the basic scenario. It's interesting to have the book in mind just to think about the filmmakers' choices though.

Also, I think this is one of the few examples where I'd prefer to see the film before reading the book. The film is an extreme stripped down version of the idea of the book, it truly is "based on the book" in the sense that the book has a whole other dimension to the plot.

I also thought there was only one motorcyclist btw!

I kind of hated the ending of the book when I read it although I loved it up to that point. the movie is much more haunting and ambiguous and weird.

TBH, the central themes of the book are at right angles to those of the film, and the book is so frequently internal dialogue its nigh unfilmable. They're two distinct entities that share little besides an alien picking up unattached hitchhikers on Scottish A roads.

^ internal monologue

well there's 2 hours i won't get back.

I think it was too short. Not that I was crazy about it or anything but I wanted more stages.

http://nomoredeaddogs.tumblr.com/post/84245309417/under-the-skin-2014-i-forgot-there-was-a-dog

:(

never really thought this merited the hype when i saw it. but am going to watch on dvd this week - i think i already wrote about it upthread when it was released but it does seem like a warpfilms, lo budget brit sci fi kind of film, one that would work better at home than in the cinema. just remember finding it quite choppy in terms of its flow, and a bit jarringly edited, more a sequence of setpieces than a narrative, as if they were a bit too razor happy in the editing room. glazer's nicole kidman film was better.

http://reverseshot.org/features/1988/two_cents_2014

Under the Skin is perfect, in its way: it nails that brand of cool distance familiar from certain strands of art-world installation work, Björk music videos, Lexus commercials, and…almost any other arty indie sci-fi film. Indeed, its icy perfection becomes all terribly expected after a point, and going back over the film, looking at its shooting strategies, it feels less a work of rigor than one of remove. Even so, its fans generally came off like a pack of forty-niners in their rush to be the first to label it “Kubrickian.” It’s clear that Jonathan Glazer, who last gave us the risible Birth, has seen A Clockwork Orange (dig that near-future retro-present shtick!), The Shining (marvel at those geometrically precise compositions and sickening string glissandos!), and, of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey (visual abstractions and cosmic ambiguity!). But one wonders if he’s really taken in Barry Lyndon (for wryly undercutting its lush romanticism), Full Metal Jacket (for conveying righteous anger in the face of senseless, real-life horror), Eyes Wide Shut (for its clear-eyed yet oddly romantic examination of the marital institution), or hell, even Dr. Strangelove (for its bawdy hilarity). The insurmountable gap between Glazer and Kubrick seems plain: both have formidable command over the stuff cinema is made of, but Kubrick was able to consistently marshal that talent into expressive works that speak beyond themselves, to the world at large. Under the Skin is airless, worked over within an inch of its life, and might well look better in a gallery than a movie theater. What exactly are we to take away from it? That humanity is special and rare and to be cherished? That alienation is the modern condition and the lot of everyone, even space vixens? One wonders, if you removed the aesthetic bells and whistles, what’s left under Under the Skin. —Jeff Reichert

Nah

What makes a film feminist? You can start by having a woman or group of women make the movie. You don’t have to address the sex lives of women, but if you do, they don’t have to be slut-shamed. You can pass the Bechdel Test (though Under the Skin doesn’t) and portray the lives of women as they are actually experienced. A sci-fi or fantasy film that suspends or hyperbolizes certain aspects of reality can play around even more. In Under the Skin, we get an alien wearing a woman-suit, but she (it?) is not necessarily concerned with being a “woman” at all. Though she understands the seductive powers of feminine wiles, it’s all a ruse, a means to a different, gooier end than her male victims imagine. This premise, which the first half of the film sets up, brims with feminist potential, as many critics have noted. But when this unfeeling alien encounters a man with a face disfigured by neurofibromatosis, instead of ingesting him like anyone else, she spares (i.e. friend-zones) him. Moreover his “specialness” triggers her curiosity about, and sympathy for, being human. Of course the exceptional treatment of disabled characters is nothing new in film and television, but this is more than a regrettably clunky episode. Because feminism is not about “women” so much as it is about toppling patriarchy, a system that says that some bodies matter more than others, whatever feminist statement this film is trying to make is almost entirely undone by this hackneyed trope. Disability is not incidental or adjacent to feminism, but wholly shares in its anti-patriarchal critique. Under the Skin punts on this very issue. Unlike, say, the dwarf-tossing incident in The Wolf of Wall Street, where the depraved treatment of the disabled illustrates Jordan Belfort’s inhuman callousness, Under the Skin comes off as sanctimonious and inconsistent (and still sexist). Though it shows how bad it is to be a woman in this world—constantly subjected to the predatory behavior of men, threatened with rape, etc.—it wrongly exempts the disfigured man from this misery. Instead of sharing in the lot of the disadvantaged, or even the privilege of men, it treats him, like so many movies, as someone outside the system, no more than a magical talisman. —Genevieve Yue

so basically men with sexual desire get killed. men without apparent desire get the girl (even if they dont get to take them to bed). so kind of like, women dont want to have sex, they just want a friend. did stephen fry write this movie?