Mysterious Skin (2004)

Top comments

1. 

   thaisquisito

   quote:

   And I thought of all the grief and sadness and fucked up suffering in the world, and it made me want to escape. I wished with all my heart that we could just leave this world behind. Rise like two angels in the night and magically... disappear.

   11 years 3 months ago
2. 

   Siskoid

   Two young boys are sexually abused and have very different reactions to that trauma in Mysterious Skin, one becoming a teen prostitute (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the other blocking those memories and replacing them with a UFO experience (Brady Corbet). The twin narratives only eventually intersect, but what holds the film together is a sense of the fantastical, kids having re-framed their experience into something meaningful to them, whether that's disturbingly couched in happy memories of the events, or completely transformed into an alternate one. Both are escapes, and even the audience may get lulled into that security - I mean, I doubt there is a more beautiful film about pedophilia, and the beautification operated by the children's point of view is more shocking than the rougher, tougher parts of their adult lives. The film lets the job of judging the characters and what is or is not a result of trauma to the audience. It, itself, feels absolutely honest to the characters' perspective. Director Gregg Araki gives us something here that feels wholly original and thought-provoking. 3 years 5 months ago
3. 

   xrobin87x

   Just as captivating as disturbing. Good direction 11 years 3 months ago

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