CNS movie review: Mysterious Skin

By Harry Forbes
Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) -- The damaging impact of child abuse is the disturbing
theme of "Mysterious Skin" (Tartan). Director Gregg Araki's film tells
a powerful, often riveting story of how being sexually abused as
8-year-olds altered the lives of two teenagers.

Neil (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), abused by his Little League coach (Bill
Sage), becomes a hardened hustler when he's 18, picking up pathetic
older men and allowing them to use him for their fantasies in return
for cash.

On the other hand, the shy, bespectacled, towheaded Brian (Brady
Corbet), with only a vague memory of his abuse, has been traumatized to
the extent he "remembers" his abuse as an alien abduction. This
conviction is fueled by the UFO programs he watches on television. He
even seeks out a strange local handicapped girl whom he has seen on one
of these programs talking about aliens. She, too, has repressed
recollections she can't quite pinpoint. (The implication is that she,
too, has been molested, possibly by the glowering old man on a tractor
Brian passes when coming to visit her.)

Both Kansas boys live with their mothers: Neil's amoral
game-show-watching mom (Elisabeth Shue) is distressingly uninhibited,
inviting her latest dates home, sometimes carelessly making out with
her lovers in full view of her son. Brian's more traditional mom (Lisa
Long) tries to create a comforting home life for her son, but is
clueless about her son's emotional turmoil.

Brian eventually discovers that Neil -- whom he doesn't remember as a
child -- may have been involved in those upsetting events of childhood,
and seeks him out. But Neil has just left town for New York. Instead,
Brian becomes friendly with Neil's best friend, the mascaraed,
flamboyant Eric (Jeff Licon), who's always had a secret crush on Neil.

Before the film ends, the boys have their reunion, and the awful
mystery of the past will be revealed.

Araki's uncompromising film -- based on a novel by Scott Heim -- is, on
the whole, sensitively handled. The early abuse scenes look as if they
were shot without putting the child actors in any inappropriate
situations. The scenes with the older Neil are raw without resorting to
full nudity. Still, we see him soliciting quite a few older men, and
there is little left to the imagination about the degradations Neil
endures.

A troubling paradox of child abuse is interestingly conveyed. Even as
an adult, the confused Neil is almost flattered that the coach picked
him, and considered him the favorite of all his boys. He "wanted to
make the coach proud."

All the performances are good, including that of Michelle Trachtenberg
as Neil's platonic soul mate, Wendy, who tries to talk him out of his
dangerous lifestyle. Araki's artistic goals are not in doubt, but it
must be said that the film's sexual content is so raw and seamy that
many will find the film repellant.

And even though the film has a redemptive ending, and the message of
the film -- which condemns such depravity -- is a good one, the strong
sexual content necessitates an "O" classification.

This film contains rough and crude language, rear nudity, sordid sexual
situations including violent rape, prostitution, graphic sexual
descriptions and drug use. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting
classification is O -- morally offensive. Not rated by the Motion
Picture Association of America.

Forbes is director of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops.