It was a first for me; the famous booing at an international film festival. Last night at the Venice Biennale Jonathan Glazer’s oddball sci-fi entry, Under The Skin, got very mixed reactions, stunning everyone whether they were cheering or booing.
My reaction was somewhere in the middle; though for the first half hour I was thinking, “Is this all there is?”, by the end I was mesmerized and roundly disturbed. Scarlett plays an alien (extra-terrestrial not illegal) who is being used by her male counterparts to lure solitary men to a dream-like and not so violent death, but still death, after all. Her skin is the bait, and she is quite defenseless as she’s dangled on the hook.
Stark and silent with very little dialogue, the film follows her as she maneuvers earth, Scotland, to be precise, and we see at first just occasional confusion and not much emotion as she tries to figure out what it is that we do around here. Her human form has a carefully practiced script, one that, along with the beautiful form she’s taken, helps her attract her prey. In situations for which she is unprepared she doesn’t have much to to say.
I don’t know; it’s a weird one, for sure, but not boo-worthy. Some critics are calling it the best thing at the festival, and I don’t know about that either, but it’s stunning. I would have thought that the audience would have made an exception, on account of Scarlett’s dress and all. She was an absolute Hollywood glamorous knock-out in that dress.
I Love Italian Everything 