I went to see Mysterious Skin tonight. It's a recent American art-house film about two boys who had been sexually molested by a baseball coach in a small town; ten years on, one boy is a somewhat callous, promiscuous gay hustler (who looks a bit like a hipster Mr. Spock), while the other blocked out details of the experience, believing instead that he had been abducted by aliens, and is trying to figure out what really happened during those lost hours.

The posters on the Tube advertised it as "slinky-hipped and sleazy-poetic", which makes it sound like the next album from The Killers or something, though the impression is misleading; this is a thoughtful and often beautifully shot film, at times explicit and harrowing, though not gratuitously so. The soundtrack really added to it; it was by Robin Guthrie (from the Cocteau Twins) and Harold Budd, and also featured songs by Slowdive, Curve and Sigur Rós, and not an overhyped NME New Wave Revival band in earshot.

I wonder whether there was any connection between the Slowdive songs in the soundtrack and the other UFO contactee being named Avalyn.

Posted by: videlicet | http:// | Tue May 31 04:23:04 2005

if you liked alex cox's repo man then you'd probably also appreciate gregg araki's doom generation and nowhere (which has a special connection with donnie darko)

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org | Tue May 31 09:22:15 2005

Haven't seen Repo Man yet. OTOH, I didn't think much of Donnie Darko; to me, it seemed like a sophomoric attempt to imitate David Lynch, with extra servings of teen-angst.

Posted by: videlicet | http:// | Wed Jun 1 01:44:42 2005

oy, nevermind then :D nowhere especially's got heaps upon steamin' heaps o'teen "alienation!"

Posted by: videlicet | http:// | Wed Jun 1 05:02:46 2005

<a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/41955">speaking</a> of <a href="http://www.davidlynch.com/dailyreport/">lynch</a> :D

cheers!

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