Saturday, January 9, 2016

Scarlett Johansson / Under the Skin review / Jonathan Glazer's singular vision

Under the Skin review – Jonathan Glazer's singular vision

Scarlett Johansson's alien on the streets of Glasgow owes much to the work of Nicolas Roeg

Mark Kermode, Observer film critic
Sunday 16 March 2014 09.00 GMT

his bold, flawed and admirably out-there adaptation of Michel Faber's 2000 novel about an extraterrestrial stalker opens with a pinpoint of light that may be a distant twinkling star or an approaching headlight – it's impossible to tell. From here we move, via kaleidoscopic invention, to an image of an eye; a constructed gaze, human on the outside, alien on the inside – inner space from outer space. With a brilliant blend of abstraction and precision, this sequence establishes a tension between the intergalactic and the earthly that underwrites the subsequent narrative; an eerie tale of a space traveller inhabiting human form, prowling the streets of Glasgow in search of raw flesh.

As the alt/indie descendant of Natasha Henstridge in Species, Scarlett Johansson is initially predatory, her clipped English vowels and thousand-yard stare effectively suggesting an imitation of life, an act refined to lure male prey like the finely wound fly-fishing ties about which Stellan Skarsgård waxes lyrical in Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac. But time spent inhabiting human form appears to have a price, and as alienation turns to something resembling empathy, so vulnerability rears its head, and our voracious visitor begins to lose her mission control.

Jonathan Glazer, director of Sexy Beast and Birth, spent nine years, off and on, struggling to distil the essence of Faber's novel, working through several drafts (and, indeed, writers) before arriving at a version that strips things right back to the bone. While the source takes pointedly satirical swipes at a range of human targets, from sexuality to factory farming, Glazer and co-writer Walter Campbell conjure a sparse, elliptical fable that bizarrely juxtaposes scenes of highly orchestrated fantasy with on-the-hoof realism to disorienting effect. In an audacious, if not wholly successful move, Johansson's kerb-crawling adventures were shot with hidden lenses, unwitting non-professionals being lured into conversation – and indeed into a white van – by an unrecognised icon in otherworldly surroundings (a Hollywood star on Sauchiehall Street), their natural reactions caught Candid Camera-style. In stark contrast, such rough-and-ready sequences sit alongside extraordinarily elegant and evocative FX tableaux that combine the shock factor of Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchersremake (bodies disintegrating from the inside) with the serenity of artist Richard Wilson's breathtaking installation 20:50 (vast pools of oil that appear solid, but threaten to engulf) as aroused men disappear into the cosmic void.

Elsewhere, the tone veers between stark horror (Johansson's blank reaction to a beach-bound family tragedy) and dawning sympathy (an encounter with a young man with neurofibromatosis challenges perceptions of beauty and ugliness), with the spectre of cosmic loneliness gnawing away at the edges of the frame.

While the introductory sequence, with its rushing reflected lights and extreme iris close-ups, evokes the Stargate finale of Kubrick's 2001, the primary touchstone here is, of course, Nicolas Roeg. In terms of both narrative and atmosphere, Glazer's film owes a weighty debt to The Man Who Fell to Earth, Roeg's adaptation of Walter Tevis's novel in which David Bowie played an alien who crossed the galaxy in search of a drink only to wind up an Earthbound drunk. Both Bowie's Newton and Johansson's "Laura" (she is identified as Isserley in the book but not on screen) inhabit human form by which they become somewhat seduced and weakened, with the mysteries of sex and sympathy being contributing factors to their demise. Significant, too, that with her black hair, ruby lips and panda eyes Johansson closely resembles Mick Jagger in Roeg and Donald Cammell's psychedelic masterpiece, Performance, another film in which identities (and indeed genders) blur and mutate – vice becoming versa.

Underpinning it all is Mica Levi, whose awe-inspiring work inhabits that strange musique concrète netherworld between score and sound effects. Working closely with sound designer Johnnie Burn, Levi creates percussive, scraping, buzzing accompaniments that nod toward the avant-garde strains of Penderecki and Ligeti (and arguably the film scores of Jonny Greenwood), while groaning fragments of what sound like an alien language recall the industrial soundscapes of Alan Splet. The overall effect is dazzling, lending cohesion to a film that occasionally threatens to fall apart in the director's hands, the disparate elements of the visuals locked together at a genetic level by the firm foundation of sound.

With such jarring elements clashing on screen, it's perhaps unsurprising thatUnder the Skin has provoked both forceful boos and cheers, the heated antipathy of some viewers and critics apparently spurring the passionate devotion of others. Yet this is neither a misunderstood masterpiece nor a wanton misstep – rather it is a striking attempt to tell an exotic story in a down-to-earth environment that deserves praise for its singularity of vision, even as it runs the risk of ridicule. Glazer has joked that in an ideal world he'd make films that would only ever be viewed by a handful of close friends, and it's to his credit that Under the Skin doesn't make compromises to court a wider audience. On the contrary, it is the work of someone who is aiming for the heavens, but is unafraid to fall to Earth.

THE GUARDIAN