This review contains some spoilers.

I’ve always been a much bigger fan of Gregg Araki than I have of his films. A Gay Asian Male (as I’m sure he’s sick of being defined as), Araki has always fought to represent the marginalized. I’m constantly delighted by his interviews, as his thoughts on film and society are to be ruminated over and remembered. But his movies, on the other hand, seem to be at most times cold and disingenuous with their almost abrasive hipness.

Mysterious Skin, however, wrestled this preconception out of my hands and tossed it to the floor like popcorn. Although flexing strenuously with Araki’s trademark punk attitude, Skin balances the more sensational aspects of Araki’s aesthetic with genuine heart and delicate performances. This is the film his fans and detractors have been waiting for, and is also the film his long under-represented characters deserved.

Perhaps tellingly, Mysterious Skin is Araki’s first film to be adapted from an outside source. Based on Scott Heim’s 1995 novel of the same name, Skin follows the separate stories of two boys who long ago shared a common sexual involvement with the same little league baseball coach. Neil McCormick (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), whose relationship with “Coach” (Bill Sage) is more akin to puppy-dog romance than to child abuse, grows up to be an unapologetic prostitute who never shakes the memory of the man who first taught him about love. Brian (Brady Corbet), on the other hand, has no such romantic visions of the past. In fact, he is so traumatized by his molestation that he spends his entire time in the film attempting to fill in the gaps of his childhood memories.

Despite being a novel adaptation, Mysterious Skin encapsulates everything we’ve come to expect from Araki’s films; from the frank sexuality and staunchly queer politics, to the hipster aesthetic and characters, to even a subplot involving Araki’s preoccupation with aliens and UFOs. Indeed, it is the handling of the UFO subplot that best demonstrates Araki’s maturation as a visual storyteller.

The movie begins with a nod to E.T — with Brian watching from his kitchen window as his backyard glows and his fence vibrates — a beginning that proves to be unsettling not because of its sci-fi/horror qualities, but because of the deeper darkness it represents. The film draws eerie visual and narrative parallels between the experiences of the UFO abducted and the sexually abused. It is the perfect way to frame a child’s dark past that gets across the horrific physical intrusions while maintaining the child’s innocence and sense of wonder. Araki is able to convey the horror of the situation without robbing Brian of his interior life. It is an intricate plot weave that could have been obvious and gimmicky, but instead works well and plays beautifully.

The story of Neil, on the other hand, speaks to the more salacious side of Araki’s themes. Neil, unlike Brian, remembers every aspect of his abuse down to exacting detail. One of the film’s most memorable shots is of Neil rejoicing in the slow-motion tinkle of rainbow coloured breakfast cereal as it comes down upon his head, a snapshot sensory moment of a food fight which took place on the first night Coach made his physical advances.

Neil grows up trapped in the sexual model of young boy/older man. He tricks himself out to neighbourhood johns, all of them older, all of them lusting after Neil’s youth and sexual confidence. In these beginning scenes, Neil does not look victimized. He gets off and loves it. It never even seems to be about money. Rather, Neil is just another stir-crazy small town kid, looking for a way out of his bland suburban nightmare. When Neil finally rages at the sky and vents his angst, it has nothing to do with sex or abuse or having a fucked up childhood.

The boys’ respective storylines are kept separate, and we never see them in the same frame (except for childhood flashbacks) until the end of the film. Still, their lives intertwine. Brian, in his X-Files-ish search for the truth, learns that his abduction is connected somehow to one of his little league team members. He searches for Neil, who at this point has escaped the town and moved to New York with his best friend, Wendy (Michelle Trachtenberg). Instead of confronting Neil, Brian forms a friendship with Neil’s other good friend, Eric (Jeffrey Licon). Together, Brian and Eric explore the mystery that is Neil; Brian because of their linked past, Eric because he is in love with him.

It is Neil’s time in the Big Apple where Araki comes close to losing focus of the film. Part of why Mysterious Skin works where Araki’s other films have not is because of the small town setting and its lack of a social scene. When Neil moves to New York Araki once again succumbs to clichéd big city aesthetic. Everyone is suddenly dangerous and vacuous, the buildings and bars are ominous; and Araki uses this as a metaphor for Neil’s downward spiral. Neil’s New York clients indulge in violent and weird sex, which has the odd effect of making Coach’s paedophilia seem sweet and caring in comparison. Neil’s plunge into darkness culminates with one of his clients beating and raping him. Araki draws another visual reference here, this time with Hitchcock’s Psycho, which unlike the opening sequence seems showy and unnecessary.

Luckily, the New York section of the film does not last long and Araki does not dwell on it (we never even find out what happens to Wendy in the end). Its effects on Neil go no further than to bring him back home, where he finally meets Brian.

The issue of paedophilia is both danced around and confronted head-on. Even the actual molestation scenes are shot in a way that comforts while churning the stomach. The tight close-ups on faces and appendages fill the frame with issues most would like to never to see in such detail, and yet it is reassuring to know they were shot in a manner that enabled the young actors to act without the Coach/Bill Sage present, and perhaps even in a manner that stripped their scenes of context.

Mysterious Skin is just that, a wonderful balancing act. Araki takes on issues, stories, and even visuals that tipped too far in one direction could have proven disastrous for a movie. Even his choice in actors, with stars from TV’s 3rd Rock From the Sun and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and Elisabeth Shue to boot), shows incredible insight and faith in what could have been nothing more than distracting stunt-casting.

The end of the film demonstrates just how excellent the actors are. In the end, Neil and Brian go to the house where it all went down, Coach no longer living there and all of his personal effects gone. Neil fills in Brian’s memory gaps, and Gordon-Levitt’s stone-faced delivery is cold yet caring. Each actor nails this scene (Corbet is a future Oscar winner, and you can put money on that statement), which with its tidy catharsis could have ruined the movie but instead ties everything together and cuts everything open again. The film’s last frame leaves the boys like a stain upon the screen, a deep stain that sticks to you as you leave the theatre. Whatever mystery might still be left in the air, one thing is clear — Gregg Araki has arrived as a fully-fleshed filmmaker.

Jef is a Halfway Staff Writer

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