Chicago Tribune Movie review: 'Mysterious Skin'
 
By Michael Wilmington
Tribune movie critic

3 stars (out of 4)

In "Mysterious Skin," Gregg Araki, director of "The Living End" and
"The Doom Generation," plunges us into a world of homoerotic ecstasy
and danger, wrecked lives and possible redemption.

Araki's often-moving film is based on Scott Heim's lyrical, disturbing
novel about two Kansas boys and the long aftermath of their separate
seductions by a pedophile baseball coach, and it's striking for the
ways Heim and Araki convey a mix of anguish and sexuality. Of all the
director's up-front tales of the volatile edges of gay life, this is
easily one of the best.

"Skin" carries its two protagonists—Brian Lackey (Brady Corbet of
"Thirteen") and Neil McCormick (Joseph Gordon-Levitt of "Third Rock
from the Sun")—from age 8 to 18. During that time, Brian—who has
somehow confused his seduction with dreams of abduction by UFOs—becomes
a repressed introvert. Neil, by contrast, grows into a magnetic teen
hustler with a cocky, what-the-hell attitude, recklessly navigating his
way through a twilight zone of sex for pay.

The director is not shy about either simulating gay sex on screen or
charting the realities of both his characters' sometimes shattered or
sordid lives. Almost like a gay-oriented version of the story Clint
Eastwood told in his chilling adaptation of Dennis Lehane's "Mystic
River," it's about lives blighted by youthful sexual abuse.

The two boys are presented as total opposites from Little League on:
Brian as the "spaz" baseball player and Neil as the effortless team
star and coach's pet. They also come from very different home lives:
Brian is the product of a conflicted home (Chris Mulkey as absent dad,
Lisa Long as smothering mom) and Neil of a one-parent household headed
by a promiscuous mother (Elisabeth Shue). Brian has few friends. Neil
has many satellites and two close pals: Michelle Trachtenberg (of
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer") as his best buddy/confidante Wendy and Jeff
Licon as his follower, Eric, who helps establish a link between the
long-ago teammates.

But their indissoluble link is the fact that both were seduced, at 8,
by their amoral coach (Bill Sage). Brian has blotted it from memory but
Neil is ensnared in a protracted affair that leads to his career as a
male whore.

It's a complex story, but Araki tells it with audacity and a
shimmering lucidity. Movies that use pedophilia or pederasty as a
theme—such as "L.I.E." or "Mystic River"—run the risk of alienating
part of the audience. But Araki makes danger and revulsion part of his
dramatic method. He builds up the nightmare quality, especially of
Neil's encounters. Borrowing imagery from sentimentalized boyhood
movies about baseball or Halloween, he's able to effectively twist and
transmute them into shivery mockeries of middle-class life.

The images stay hard and gorgeously bright even as "Skin" turns darker
and moves onto more dangerous ground. Coach Heider is an engaging
monster with a breezy, pseudo-Robert Redford exterior and Araki
presents him as a conscienceless, practiced predator.

As Brian, Corbet suggests a more detached and narcotized version of
Napoleon Dynamite, without the humor. Gordon-Levitt plays Neil as a
brash, Matt Dillon-esque teenage stud. Both of them bring out the human
sides of their characters, as do Shue, Mulkey and Long in the parent
roles and the ensemble who play Neil's gallery of johns. Araki uses
clips from low-budget horror movies, including George Romero's original
1968 "Night of the Living Dead," and "Mysterious Skin's" acting
suggests a horror movie—as does the progressive violence between Neil
and his customers.

Araki, always among the most unabashed and adventurous of the young
gay American directors, conveys this shadowy world with both compassion
and terror, a strange sort of boyish sentimentality filtering his
hard-edged gaze into the abyss.

"Mysterious Skin" is an absorbing story. Even though it takes you to
places you may not want to go, the film never loses its human
touch—that feel of skin on skin or of the past inescapably invading the
present.

mwilmington@...

"Mysterious Skin"

Directed, written, edited and produced by Gregg Araki; based on the
novel by Scott Heim; photographed by Steve Gainer; production designed
by Devorah cq Herbert; music by Harold Budd, Robin Guthrie (of Cocteau
Twins); produced by Araki, Mary Jane Skalski, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte. A
Tartan Films release; opens Friday. Running time: 1:45. No MPAA rating:
Adult (parents cautioned for sensuality, nudity, drugs, language,
violence).



Brian Lackey - Brady Corbet

Neil McCormick - Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Wendy Peterson - Michelle Trachtenberg

Eric Preston - Jeff Licon

Coach Heider - Bill Sage

Ellen McCormick - Elisabeth Shue

Avalyn Friesen - Mary Lynn Rajskub cq

Mr. Lackey - Chris Mulkey