Fridae

Mr. Araki, come to think of it, may turn out to be the American (Pedro) Almod�var. - The New York Times

Let's get one thing out of the way immediately - Mysterious Skin features quite a number of sex scenes, but this is not a movie to watch if you're looking for something scintillating. The sex scenes in Mysterious Skin will shock you, will give you pause, will make you think� but it will probably not excite you. There is little wonder why the film received an NC-17 rating (though was later released Unrated) in the States, as these may be some of the most brutal (and brutally honest) images you'll see in a gay-themed movie, but to think that the film only has this "merit" is to miss the forest for the tree.

Directed by gay Asian-American filmmaker Gregg Araki, who helmed gay films like Totally F***ed Up and The Living End, Mysterious Skin is based on (also gay) author Scott Heim's novel of the same name. The premise is immediately intriguing - Brian Lackey's (played first by George Webster and then in his late teenage years by Brady Corbet) voiceover opens the movie, and he tells us that in 1981, when he was eight years old, he lost five hours of his life. The lost time then happened once more on Halloween 1983. Brian believes that he was abducted by aliens, hence the missing time and the fragmented memories. Brian grows up into an awkward teenager, more asexual than straight or gay, and obsessed with alien abduction.

Then there's Neil McCormick (Chase Ellison, and then Joseph Gordon-Levitt of Third Rock From the Sun), who also had a life-changing event when he was also eight years old. He believes that he had found true love in his Little League coach (Bill Sage), who happens to have a predilection towards young boys. The incident appeared to have a marked effect on Neil who becomes a hustler by age 15, working at the local park. The town is small, and Neil claims to have had sex with every gay man in town - twice over.

His best friend (and fag hag) Wendy (Michelle Trachtenberg of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame) describes Neil as a person whose heart has been replaced by a bottomless black hole. But beneath that veneer of toughness lies a young, na�ve boy, and this is seen when Neil joins Wendy in New York, intent on continuing his hustling ways. He soon realises that he isn't in Kansas anymore, and big city people operate on a whole different set of rules. The AIDS epidemic is looming its ugly head, and in one harrowing experience Neil manages to observe how the disease can ravage a human being.

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Meanwhile, back in Kansas, Brian befriends one of Neil's friends, the outrageously attired Eric (Jeff Licon), and soon Brian finds out that Neil may be the key to the mystery of his missing hours. When their paths finally cross again, Neil attempts to fill in the blanks for Brian, but truth can sometimes be very difficult to handle.

It's not difficult to guess the eventual denouement of the film, but even with this knowledge, Mysterious Skin packs a powerful punch -the movie does not shy away from taboo topics like paedophilia and AIDS, and is perhaps one of the most realistic movies about child abuse I have ever seen. It does not roundly condemn the abuser, and acknowledges the fact that at such a young age, children need not necessarily understand what's happening to them, with the scars of the encounter not arising till much later.

Although much of the sex and violence is suggested and takes place off screen, what remains is still very hard to watch. It would be rare to find any audience member who does not flinch during the more violent scenes in the film, and the message to practise safe sex never more convincing than the scene where Neil encounters a dying AIDS victim.

Such a movie requires a very strong cast, and the main characters of Mysterious Skin delivers this in spades. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Brady Corbet both inhabit their roles with great aplomb, Gordon-Levitt especially being able to bring to life both the tough and fragile sides of Neil with much believability. Corbet retains a childlike innocence and awkwardness in his portrayal of Brian, and is every bit a child whose mind had refused to grow at the same pace as his body has. The duo is ably augmented by the supporting cast, with Mary Lynn Rajskub as one of the most memorable, playing a woman who's equally obsessed about UFOs as Brian, and eventually diverting some of that obsession to him, with decidedly surprising results.

Mysterious Skin might just be one of the most important gay themed movies to be released this year, and marks Araki's maturation as a filmmaker, particularly in the gay genre. Despite the difficult material, this film is well worth a trip to the cinema, not for the gay theme alone, also for the insightful look at child abuse.

Read Fridae's interview with Gregg Araki here.