Under The Skin

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Jonathan Glazer, Starring: Scarlett Johansson

Jonathan Glazer seems to be a director always working in that twilight of universal recognition and an area just below the radar, and though he doesn't have many films under his belt, he can always be trusted to deliver something dark and engaging. Sexy Beast unleashed a frightening psychotic, expertly played by Ben Kingsley and in the seldom seen and unjustly forgotten Birth, a child claimed the attention of a couple and family with a creepy agenda. In the aptly titled Under the Skin, Glazer offers us something abstract, darkly poetic, sometimes abstruse and offbeat.

Scarlett Johansson stars as an entity who assumes the body of a human female. With the help of a mysterious sidekick, she drives around a Scottish town, looking for males wandering alone. Luring them into her van, she drives them to the interior of a shabby building with the promise of sex. Her sidekick speeds around in his motorcycle, abbetting her act though we never learn what they specifically seek or why.

Once the victims enter the building, they disrobe as they follow slowly behind the entity. The large room they enter is completely black and empty; only the bodies are visible. Luring them further, the victims slowly sink into what resembles a black pool of crude oil until they completely submerge. They don't cry out or struggle, as if in a trance, while the entity walks on, never sinking herself. Later we see what becomes of her victims: they don't asphyxiate in the viscous substance as we might expect but instead awaken to find themselves unable to extricate themselves as they watch the entity receding on the surface. The victims then undergo a kind of transformation; their bodies become a kind of wispy, epidermal remnant.

We hear almost no dialogue in the film and what the Scottish characters do speak is barely understood. The film could have used subtitles. Only the entity's British accent comes across audibly. No matter; I think Glazer intentionally makes the Scottish brogue difficult to decipher to muddy the human/alien distinction. Humans appear as strange and alien as the entity. It is interesting that we never see an "alien" but something shrouded in human skin--a subtle metaphor for alienation? Commentary on the dehumanization of women in our society; humans regarded only for their external, physical projections? Interpretations can flourish.

The entity looks at the world with a stoic, scientific curiosity. As the film progesses, she begins to sympathize with her victims; no longer leading them to their peril but forming a more human bond with them until she becomes prey herself. In one scene, a man with a facial deformation is treated tenderly until he too meets his viscid fate.

The role of the entity is a markedly different character for Johansson than her current, Captain America acting incarnation and is, of course more ambitious. In Captain America she's little more than a siren in form-fitting leather whereas her character here uses her feminine allure more as a means to an end.

Glazer's camera work shows a more mature, aesthetically assured growth. The opening shot of concentric circles; an abstract, visual melding of the human and entity would be the envy of Kubrick, as would the blackened room where the men meet their strange doom.

I really like and admire Under the Skin, which are not always compatible, emotional reactions one has to a film. I think Glazer is an exceptional director and one who will no doubt astonish us again. The film leaves much room for reflection about what we've seen and what we must interpret.