"Under The Skin"

Upon hearing the premise for “Under The Skin” – an alien assumes the guise of a sexy human female in order to lure unsuspecting men to their deaths – one would be forgiven for instinctively dismissing it as a probable exploitation of Scarlett Johansson’s body and sex-appeal for the purpose of perpetuating an irrational fear of female sexuality. How interesting and refreshing it is, then, that it should turn out to be about the discovery of otherness rather than a manipulation of the fear of otherness; and that the other, in this case, is us.

The film opens with abstract images of black and white circular shapes and lights, vaguely evocative of UFO lights but presented without any context or clues that would confirm that hypothesis or any other, leaving the viewer to either speculate or simply experience the images for themselves. In that respect, it recalls the early experimental films of the Dada movement such as Marcel Duchamp’s “Anemic Cinema” or Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy’s “Ballet Mécanique”. More importantly, it serves a double purpose: Prepare the viewer’s mind for the oblique loosely-narrative nature of the film, and sneakily start the process through which they will subconsciously begin to identify with the protagonist’s confrontation with the strange and the new.

Scarlett Johansson’s unnamed alien protagonist (none of the characters in the film are named, not even in the end credits) is part of a crew that has assumed the guise of humans – in her case, that of a dead prostitute – for a mission whose purpose is unclear but involves Johansson driving a truck and picking up random men under the pretense of asking for directions, seducing them and inviting them into an empty house from which they never come out. With each new victim comes a little more information on what happens to them.

Jonathan Glazer’s direction shifts from dark onirism to aestheticized naturalism in a manner so seamless that it doesn’t immediately register. In most scenes, Scarlett Johansson’s alien is a silent professional at work, scouring Scottish roads with an emotionless face, her eyes intently scouting for potential prey while also taking in her environment.  In those scenes, Glazer films Scarlett Johansson at the wheel of her truck like Alfred Hitchcock filmed Janet Leigh driving her car in “Psycho”, focusing on those eyes with great attention.

Once potential prey is found, she puts on an impeccable English accent and seduces them without making any conscious attempt at doing so. Either unaware or uninterested in human heterosexual mating habits, she simply engages in small-talk with the men, asking them innocuous questions about what they’re doing, where they’re from and where they’re going, and letting her looks do the rest of the job. The men get in, talk a little about themselves and she listens politely, not exhibiting great interest in what they are saying but going along with it. Johansson’s transformation from eagle-eyed predator to charming everywoman and back is, in keeping with Glazer’s direction, so seamless as to be invisible.

It must be noted at this point that all these actors were non-professional local men who, until the film crew revealed itself once their scenes were deemed satisfactory, had no idea they were in a film and that the beautiful woman they were flirting with was Scarlett Johansson. Not only does this give those scenes a natural spontaneity that scripted seduction scenes rarely possess, it furthers the viewer’s process of identification with the alien and reinforces the film’s theme of seeing ourselves through her eyes: This really is us that she and Glazer’s cameras are observing and interacting with; us as we are, without any fakery. Of course, white heterosexual cisgendered working-class Scottish men are hardly perfect representatives of humanity as a whole, but humanity is about more than such categories. We convey a whole lot about ourselves through the smallest, most insignificant of our gestures and words, whether it’s the words and gestures themselves or our delivery of them. And it is partly through these little conversations about nothing that the alien gradually grows more and more curious about this planet and this species she’s been sent to harvest.

The other part of her journey of discovery and self-discovery comes through the observation of everyday life around her, from a man’s failed rescue of his drowning wife and dog to the simple observation of people crossing the street or waiting for the bus. Much like the aforementioned “Psycho” and many of Hitchcock’s films, “Under The Skin” is all about gazing and being gazed at. As the alien uses her male victims’ gaze to lure them to their doom, her own gaze becomes a portal through which we see our world and ourselves: Strange, at times frightening yet consistently beautiful and teeming with life. As her curiosity grows, she begins to experiment more with her body and surroundings. One such experiment consists of tripping in the middle of the street just to feel what it’s like and observe the bystanders’ reactions. In a much later scene, she has a most unexpected reaction to eating a piece of cake. In all those scenes, Johansson’s eyes communicate discreet surprise with just a hint of fear. In a way, one could see her alien as a dark counterpart to her role as Samantha in “Her”, in that they have contrasting reactions to experiencing everything in our world for the first time: Samantha reacts with joy, wonder and excitement; the alien reacts with bemusement, wariness and fear.

This journey of self-discovery reaches a turning point when she picks up a young man suffering from neurofibromatosis who, quite understandably, finds himself intimidated and bewildered at being accosted by a friendly and beautiful woman who seems genuinely curious about his life, doesn’t appear to understand why he has never been with a woman or notice his deformities at all, and even offers to let him touch her hands, face and neck. In a lesser film, such a scene would have likely ended up being a patronizing display of pity. In this film, it is honest, heartfelt and entirely devoid of manipulation. Nothing in the alien’s facial expressions or tone suggests pity. On the contrary, her compliments towards his hands sound sincere and spontaneous. Her accumulation of previous victims and observation of human behaviour give logic to her interest in him and her subsequent actions. For the first time, the alien is truly being herself, going beyond her mission parameters to know and understand her intended victim as a person. What we are seeing is not a beautiful woman taking pity on a physically unattractive man and magnanimously deigning to let him have sensual or sexual contact with him; it is a person, unaffected by learned human prejudices, starting to overcome her own and recognizing humans as equal beings whose lives have value.

The scene’s poignancy owes much to the unaffected chemistry between Johansson and Adam Pearson. Pearson, a non-professional actor and member of the charitable organization Changing Faces, was the only “victim” to be fully aware that he was shooting a film, but you wouldn’t know it from the raw honesty of his performance. He bares his soul – and his body – with a fearlessness that few more experienced professional actors possess. Every slight gesture, every eye movement, every turn of the head, every silence appear reflexive and unplanned. In turn, Johansson’s low-key inquisitiveness and compassion appear as unprompted as Pearson’s. It’s a fascinating duet between an untrained amateur relying purely on his soul and a glamorous Hollywood star striking a subtle balance between in-character calculations and understated authentic feeling.

“Under The Skin” feels as alien as its protagonist. Aside from the seduction scenes, there is almost no dialogue. It is a film built on mood and feeling, through perfectly-composed shots, a haunting score by Mica Levi and Scarlett Johansson’s eyes and body language. In some of its best scenes, it is strongly reminiscent of Nicolas Roeg’s best work – particularly “Walkabout”, without a doubt one of the greatest explorations of otherness ever committed to screen. Glazer’s film does not quite reach its level of profundity, partly due to a disappointing Red Riding Hood-horror resolution that resorts to a facile predator-turned-prey twist and suggests Glazer and his co-screenwriter Walter Campbell had run out of ideas by that point. But the bold and beautiful look it gives us at ourselves, as well as the hypnotic experience it provides us in doing so, makes it a valuable work of art.

"I Am Love"

Luca Guadagnino’s “I Am Love” starts with the promise of a complex multifaceted study of passion, sexual and cultural identity, and how they all intersect in a traditional patriarchal family unit of the Italian bourgeoisie. Alas, by its third act, it appears to have left most of its ideas behind in order to morph into melodrama, by which point Guadagnino’s array of visual weapons – very long tracking shots, intellectual montages associating point-of-view shots to convey internal turmoil, blurred long-focal shots – lose the meaning that gave them emotional power and end up as little more than shallow theatrical tricks.

The film’s tale of one woman’s destructive passion wreaking havoc in her Italian upper-class family naturally invites comparisons to Luchino Visconti’s baroque masterpiece “Senso”, and indeed Guadagnino does succeed in giving “I Am Love” a sense of scale befitting the family’s social situation and the scope of the protagonist’s sensorial cravings. However, Tilda Swinton’s restrained portrayal of Emma Recchi’s internal emotional combustion offers a sharp contrast to the grandiloquent, wide-eyed passion Alida Valli conveyed as Livia Serpieri. And, for the first half of the film, most of Guadagnino’s style stays in line with Swinton’s performance, allowing its characters to slowly sink into the viewer’s mind and grow in the world they inhabit, through long and sometimes distant shots that unconsciously encourage the viewer to pay close attention to the actors’ body language.

One of the film’s potentially richest aspects turns into one of its biggest disappointments: The fluidity of Emma’s childrens’ sexuality, and its possible relation to her own erotic confusion. She accidentally discovers her daughter Elisabetta’s homosexuality through a CD containing a note detailing her love for a woman she met. The note was intended for her elder brother Edoardo, whom his namesake grandfather (Gabriele Ferzetti) appointed co-heir with his father to the family business – and who, by the film’s beginning, has already broken a family tradition by losing a race to his best friend Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini).  Edoardo and Antonio share a friendship so close that Edoardo is willing to risk properly running the family business by also opening and co-owning a restaurant with Antonio. The scenes involving the two – particularly their first meeting at the place where they plan to open their restaurant – ooze with untapped sexual tension. It’s present in their gazes, the silences and pauses, the careful sensuality with which Antonio places his food on the table, the way Guadagnino frames him doing so in a way that places the camera at Edo’s shoulder-level, giving the impression that the, like the viewer, is secretly admiring his friend’s body language. All of this would appear to set up a complex and quasi-incestuous love triangle as Emma starts a steamy affair with Antonio, a man who might have become her son’s lover. A son who also happens to be engaged to a woman who is pregnant with his child

Unfortunately, as soon as Emma and Antonio’s affair begins, the context surrounding it is gradually left behind, replaced by less important scenes involving an American investor Shai Kubelkian (Wes Anderson regular Waris Ahluwalia), who urges Edoardo to sell the company to him in order to save it. The complex flow of life and feelings is replaced by heavy-handed melodrama, whose shadow had already begun looming over the film in the scene where Emma noticed Antonio’s presence and started following him in an ill-advised gender-switched “Vertigo” homage – with Tilda Swinton sporting a hairstyle similar to Kim Novak’s iconic spiral in case the allusion lacked clarity. John Adams’s score, subdued until then, explodes in a sudden outburst of shrill incongruity that robs it of most of its dramatic effect. It is symptomatic of much of what is wrong with the film’s second half: An overabundance of stylistic and dramatic effects that, more than illustrate Emma’s perception of events, appear to cover up a lack of genuine inspiration on Guadagnino’s part.

The first cut of “I Am Love” reportedly ran at about 210 minutes before it was trimmed down to its current 118 minutes runtime. The loss is quite evident in the way so many characters – particularly Elisabetta, whose coming-out encourages Emma to take a first step towards following her desires – appear unfinished and only partially explored, and the contrivance of the film’s dramatic conclusion – Edoardo’s accidental death following an argument with his mother over her affair with Antonio he had just deduced. At its original cut, perhaps “I Am Love” could have been the profound study of sexual desire and personal aspirations in 21^st century upper class Italy that it aspires to be and initially promises to be. As it is, however, it leaves the bittersweet taste of a half-accomplished work of culinary art.

"Her"

The not-too-distant future depicted in Spike Jonze’s “Her” is, much like the life of his protagonist, a gilded cage. Its world, from the pristine architecture to the pastel-coloured interior design, is as pretty and elegant as a brand-new Ipod; and in spite of the ostensibly warm colours used to film it, just as cold and artificial. There are relatively few exterior scenes, and even fewer wide shots and short focals. The majority of the film’s shots revolve around Joaquin Phoenix’s face or torso. He is Theodore Twombly, a sad and lonely man undergoing a divorce with his wife Catherine (Rooney Mara). The divorce is made all the more painful by the fact that he clearly still loves her and is struggling to understand how he destroyed such a beautiful and lasting relationship. Emotionally shut off, the only people with whom he communicates regularly are his best friend Amy (Amy Adams, continuing Spike Jonze’s trend of trying to make glamorous women look more “ordinary” by giving them plain hairstyles) and her husband Charles (Matt Letscher).
 

Ironically, in spite of his difficulty to handle relationships of his own, Theodore is very adept at understanding and helping those of other people, as evidenced by his job as a ghost-writer of letters between loved ones. While his prose indicates great sensitivity, the very existence of such a job makes the future depicted in the film even more frightening. It suggests a growing inability among humans to speak from their hearts to those who matter to them, without resorting to help from an unknown third party. It is sad, but also keeping in theme with the film’s theme of depersonalization.

 

Amy and Charles appear very happily married and eager to help Theodore fill the void in his life. In his own attempt to do so, Theodore purchases a sentient OS system with a female personality (Scarlett Johansson). The first action she takes after her “birth” is to name herself Samantha, for the very human reason that she just liked the sound of it. On the surface, Samantha appears to be a hetero/bisexual male power fantasy: An artificial female computer program with the voice of Scarlett Johansson, designed to meet her male owner’s every needs, working simultaneously as a secretary, confidante and eventually lover. The only thing that’s missing is a body for the male owner to gaze at and touch. And that is one of the keys to both Samantha and Theodore’s relationship and Samantha’s growth as a character. 

 

Because she cannot be seen or touched, Theodore interacts with her in a way that frees him from the awkwardness and challenges that come with interacting with flesh-and-blood beings. No touching, no eye contact, only a voice. She would be a good companion for an autistic person – which, I suppose, Theodore might be. It liberates him and allows him to speak freely with her, in a way he simply does not allow to himself when in presence of fellow human beings. He treats her not as a servant but as a best friend, with dreams and desires of her own.

This is where the brilliance of Scarlett Johansson’s performance needs to be appreciated. Programmed to learn and evolve to better suit her tasks, Samantha has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and discovery, and is capable of storing and handling quasi-limitless amount of data simultaneously in a mere second. Most of what she sees and experiences, she sees and experiences for the very first time. In terms of age, she is an infant yet her processing and analyzing of data, as well as her emotional responses to it, are most definitely adult. She loves Theodore naturally, illogically, but envies his humanity. She has no body, no nerves to be aroused with, yet her arousal when she and Theodore engage in cybersex for the first time is disarmingly sincere. Her immaterial nature allows her to be in multiple places at once and see and know things no single human could feel but she wishes she had a body of her own, so that he could touch her and make her feel the exact physical sensations he feels. The way Scarlett Johansson conveys all these complicated and so-very human feelings as experienced by an artificial non-corporeal entity is not only a testament to the underappreciated art of voice acting, it also suggests an intelligent and perceptive human being.

Though Samantha’s growth as a character constitutes the strongest aspect of Jonze’s screenplay, the film does not always seize full advantage of its potential and can be at times frustrating in its repetition of romantic comedy structures: Happy times musical montages, fractures in the couple based on a third party’s comment, reconciliation with help of a supportive best friend… These resorts to familiarity in what is otherwise a very human film, aside from making the characters' liberation from the genre's codes more difficult, stagnate its exploration of the challenges posed to romantic relationships by technology and its increase of the blurring of the line between artificiality and reality.

The best moments in “Her” are the most uncomfortable ones, in which the constant struggle humans experience in communicating with each other is made all the more obvious in a digital world: Theodore’s lunch with his freshly-divorced wife; his interactions with his coworker Paul (Chris Pratt) who may or may not be hitting on him; his blind date with Amelia (Olivia Wilde) that starts off very well but ends disastrously when Theodore makes his inability to commit clear… But the best of these is undoubtedly the heartbreaking sequence in which Samantha, sensing Theodore’s doubts about the reality of their relationship, hires a sex surrogate named Isabella (Portia Doubleday, dubbed by French singer Soko) in a wince-inducing attempt at imitating the inimitable chemistry that exists in sexual situations between two people who love each other.

As Theodore Twombly, Joaquin Phoenix continues to demonstrate why he is the best American actor of his generation. With his cumbersome glasses, unbecoming moustache and beltless trousers, Theodore resembles the kind of nerd stereotype that was already dated in the 1990s but Phoenix's mumbles, tired eyes and complete commitment transcend any possible artifices to imbue him with deep, undeniable humanity. There is not a moment where he is not Theodore, not a moment where he makes any conscious attempt to impress the audience. Every gesture, every glance is natural, appropriate considering the entire film questions the reality of feelings, not just in Theodore and Samantha’s relationship but in all relationships. “Her” is a film made by someone who has clearly learned hard lessons in his own past relationships and, like Theodore, has used them to gain a better understanding of himself. I am glad he shared them with us, in the form of an imperfect but valuable and intelligent film.

"Manic"

Mental illness and disability is a fairly popular subject for filmmakers and actors alike. The serious and dedicated will seize the opportunity to examine people whom most of us find naturally fascinating due to their ostentatious otherness. From then on, different goals and different outcomes may ensue:  Some may attempt to seek – but not necessarily succeed –an understanding of them as human beings. Others, such as John Cassavetes in his masterpiece “A Woman Under The Influence”, may instead use them as a medium through which to talk about and perhaps better understand themselves. Others still, such as Milos Forman in “One Flew Over A Cuckoo’s Nest”, may use them as an allegory for the oppression of individuality.

Unserious hacks, on the other hand, will simply exploit the topic as bait for critical praise and awards by aggressively tugging at the audience’s heartstrings and starring Magical Mentally Ill People in the lead role, saintly martyrs of society’s cruelty and intolerance who teach other characters the true values of life.

Mercifully, Jordan Melamed’s “Manic” avoids the latter tropes but its self-consciously scrupulous efforts to convey what life is like for these people place it in an uncomfortable position between quality and mediocrity. Melamed’s attempts to reproduce the impression of “real life” through heavy cuts and close shots filmed in long focal lenses using a handheld digital camera come across as self-conscious rather than natural. After a few well-directed scenes of the characters talking or having a breakdown, sentiment creeps back in the form of “liberating” group activity – trashing the main room to a Rage Against The Machine song – whose desired effect of spontaneity is undone by the obviousness of its efforts and dramatic dubiousness. The script offers characters with tremendous potential and an evident desire to look at them as human beings but it only seldom gets to see beyond the two-dimensional tropes they constitute, whether they’re Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s troubled angry youth or Zooey Deschanel’s depressive rape victim.

  

Indeed, most of the success in making those mentally ill teens convincing comes from the actors rather than the screenplay itself. I understand many of them, such as Sara Rivas, were actual patients being treated for depression. Their dialogue, while not always especially original, generally comes across as suitably authentic. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who would later deliver an even more outstanding portrayal of an even more disturbed young man in Gregg Araki’s “Mysterious Skin”, avoids every mistake Melamed makes, never giving the impression of consciously trying to be accurate. He is, as always, a joy to behold and one of the main reasons to recommend this film. His protagonist Lyle Jensen, institutionalized after almost beating a boy to death with a baseball bat, is a potboiler of incandescent rage, not immediately obvious but always lurking within the background of his eyes. Credit must also be given to Cody Lightning for his modest, non-judgmental and sensitive portrayal of Kenny, a remorseful 12 year-old molester of other children and himself the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of his stepfather. Regretfully, perhaps out of discomfort and uncertainty in how to handle an extremely difficult and taboo subject, his interactions with Lyle are not explored as further as they could and should be.

The most interesting character, surprisingly, is not him however but rather Don Cheadle’s Doctor David Monroe, the psychiatrist in charge of their group therapy. Whenever put in the spotlight, many movie psychiatrists – Judd Hirsch in “Ordinary People” and Robin Williams in “Good Will Hunting” come to mind – are drearily predictable, dogged in their often unorthodox attempts to reach out to their troubled patients until they make a break through and give an inspiring speech or two after which we the audience know things will turn out better for them. Doctor Monroe, however, has issues of his own: He’s frustrated, unsure of his own efficiency, often getting the impression of going nowhere with his patients and struggling to keep his own calm. His personal struggle as a recent ex-smoker to resist the temptation to succumb to his old vice does not help.

 

Unfortunately, despite Cheadle’s very commendable performance, the screenplay by Blayne Weaver and Michael Bacall (who also play orderly Charlie and bipolar self-harming patient Chad respectively) makes the same mistake Melamed makes as a director: Trying so hard to avoid cliché it ends up accidentally falling back into it, much like someone stepping in cowpat while diligently avoiding others around them. For example, at one point in the film, while trying to get him to face the fact that the consequences of his father’s physical abuse will likely haunt him forever, Monroe directly tells Lyle that he isn’t going to give him a speech that’ll give him an epiphany and a subsequent breakthrough, yet for all intents and purposes, that is exactly what happens. To be sure, unlike most Hollywood films, Lyle doesn’t get better and learn to let go, but he does end up realizing Monroe is right, in a patently obvious manner. Watch out for particularly heavy-handed symbolism involving Vincent Van Gogh’s last painting, the significance of which – freedom or despair – is the subject of a passionate argument between two patients. While the film’s conclusion – that recognizing that they need help may be the greatest liberation a mentally ill person can get – is valid and refreshing, the road used to travel to it is still paved with clichés.

 As a critic, I generally attach a great amount of importance in authenticity within a film. In this case, my insistence on authenticity stems from a rather personal relationship I have with the subject matter. As a sufferer of Asperger’s syndrome, dyspraxia and severe anxieties, I know what it is like to be trapped in one’s own perception of life and have difficulty breaking out of it. I too have experienced bouts of bottled-in anger that eventually resulted in long-suppressed eruptions, though thankfully never to the point of such violence. While I have never been institutionalized, I have visited mental hospitals and observed mental patients. I do not in any way claim expertise on the topic; it simply speaks to me in a way that is difficult to explain. I dislike seeing films such as “Girl, Interrupted”, “I Am Sam” or “The Eighth Day” portray easily-identifiable trope collections in lieu of genuine people, and treat the life of the mentally ill as a series of dramatic conventions rather than uncomfortably real situations.

To be authentic, a film does not necessarily have to be an accurate reproduction of real life but rely on its creators’ own perception of life and avoid cliché whenever possible, or at the very least try and turn cliché into something bearing one’s own mark. The latter is what “Manic” does not succeed at doing, in spite of all-too noticeable efforts.