sexual maturity
Gregg Araki's Mysterious Skin mines tabloid/talk show material--the missing link between alien abduction and child molestation--but at its heart it is a coming-of-age story. Araki shows his two small-town, Midwestern protagonists hardening from children to young adults on the flipsides of a coin. Molested as a child, Neil (Joseph Gorden-Levitt, formerly of Third Rock From the Sun) grows into the poses and sexual swagger he tries on. Brian (Brady Corbit), similarly traumatized and unable to outgrow the frightened smallness of childhood, bends towards affection wherever he can find it, like a plant starved for light.
Araki tilts these twinned storylines towards Neil, who early in the movie ejaculates watching his mother go down on the town's baseball coach. It is only a matter of time before, in a long seduction sequence fueled by peach Nehis and sugary cereals, Atari games and Polaroids, Coach Herder molests Neil. This is the boy's deviance awakening. Soon after, Neil hijacks a classmate on Halloween night, lights bottle rockets from his mouth, and then, ensures his victim's complicity by molesting him--in effect, making the event unspeakable, all the while repeating Coach Herder's best lines. As a teenager, Neil turns tricks, proud and bemused at his sway over middle-aged men who grope and clutch at his beauty as if they could take hold of it. In one scene, as he fucks one of his johns, we see Neil perfecting his technique, maturing before our eyes.
Much has been made about this movie being Araki's most mature outing (I had never wanted to see any of his "bad boy"-era films). There are telegraphed plotlines, awkwardly handled scenes with his cast of supporting characters, and Brian's story is never more than a sideline to Neil's. But Araki deserves the new reputation in his depctions of sex. Filming all things sexual, from abuse to abandon, Araki can shock or subtly move us, and never succumbs to his sentimental heart.
(MESSAGE re: yesterday's self-portrait. I might have made my face a little longer and horsey than it actually appears.)
Gregg Araki's Mysterious Skin mines tabloid/talk show material--the missing link between alien abduction and child molestation--but at its heart it is a coming-of-age story. Araki shows his two small-town, Midwestern protagonists hardening from children to young adults on the flipsides of a coin. Molested as a child, Neil (Joseph Gorden-Levitt, formerly of Third Rock From the Sun) grows into the poses and sexual swagger he tries on. Brian (Brady Corbit), similarly traumatized and unable to outgrow the frightened smallness of childhood, bends towards affection wherever he can find it, like a plant starved for light.
Araki tilts these twinned storylines towards Neil, who early in the movie ejaculates watching his mother go down on the town's baseball coach. It is only a matter of time before, in a long seduction sequence fueled by peach Nehis and sugary cereals, Atari games and Polaroids, Coach Herder molests Neil. This is the boy's deviance awakening. Soon after, Neil hijacks a classmate on Halloween night, lights bottle rockets from his mouth, and then, ensures his victim's complicity by molesting him--in effect, making the event unspeakable, all the while repeating Coach Herder's best lines. As a teenager, Neil turns tricks, proud and bemused at his sway over middle-aged men who grope and clutch at his beauty as if they could take hold of it. In one scene, as he fucks one of his johns, we see Neil perfecting his technique, maturing before our eyes.
Much has been made about this movie being Araki's most mature outing (I had never wanted to see any of his "bad boy"-era films). There are telegraphed plotlines, awkwardly handled scenes with his cast of supporting characters, and Brian's story is never more than a sideline to Neil's. But Araki deserves the new reputation in his depctions of sex. Filming all things sexual, from abuse to abandon, Araki can shock or subtly move us, and never succumbs to his sentimental heart.
(MESSAGE re: yesterday's self-portrait. I might have made my face a little longer and horsey than it actually appears.)
posted by jerome at 8:31 PM
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