Somewhere in Scotland, (an alien in the form of (?)) a woman is driving a van on the streets at night, trying to pick up men. One man is attracted to her, she brings him to a desolate house and undresses. As he undresses as well, and walks towards her in the dark, he falls into a liquid - and his body is dissolved in it, leaving only his skin. Sometimes, the woman also walks on foot and browses several bars. One night, she picks up another man, who has a disfigured face and never had a girlfriend. He is also absorbed in the liquid in the house. However, after that, the woman leaves the van and escapes. She tries out a piece of cake, but it is disgusting to her. She meets a man, stays in his house and tries to have normal sex with him. She leaves again, stumbles upon a logger in the forest who tries to rape her, but only accidentally peels her skin away, revealing her black alien body. The logger then pours gasoline on the alien and sets her on fire.
Jonathan Glazer's "Under the Skin" polarized the audience, since many were surprised to encounter a rare example of a pure experimental film featuring one of the most popular Hollywood stars of that time, Scarlett Johansson, who plays a nameless (alien) woman in a very vague, cryptic story that deliberately refuses to go anywhere particularly. Even though it is ostensibly a science-fiction movie, "Under the Skin" is highly allegorical and may be interpreted similarly like Polanski's "Repulsion", namely an exploration of a woman's genophobia, i.e. fear and disgust of sex. She seemingly picks up men and brings them to her desolate house, but they then fall into a liquid naked and are killed. This seems like a radical feminist revenge tale, except that all these men never did anything (on screen) to deserve this. Their demise is presented in peculiarly-hermetic-stylistic shots of the woman and the man seen in front of a completely black background, until he makes a few steps forwards towards her and sinks below into the unknown. One encounter makes a difference, though, and is highly interesting: when the woman picks up a 26-year old lad with a disfigured face, who claims to have never had a girlfriend. He is also ultimately killed, but this seems to trigger a change inside of her. Did she feel pity for the first time? Did she recognize the lad's loneliness and his wish to find someone to love, which she defiled? Was she in human form for so long until she started to feel human emotions and empathy as well? All these are interesting points, but are presented frustratingly cold and indifferent, only objectively following the woman wondering aimlessly in the last third, without preparing a point at the end. This "empty walk" and a lack of situations to identify with exacerbates the effort of the viewers to "decipher" the movie, yet it might please some more 'adventerous' cinema buffs keen to find something alternative in cinema.
Grade;+
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