Out of Hours Film

alien flytrap loose adaptation of Michel Faber’s cult love, sampling the delights humanity has to Under the Skin novel Under The Skin invites us to do just offer (ok, cake, sex, and Scarlett Johansson Directed by Jonathan Glazer that, to look dispassionately at humanity in exploring her nude body at any rate) before all our bestial savagery and loving, glorious patriarchal society brutally reasserts its “O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us, To see compassion from the perspective of Scarlett power over her. oursels as ithers see us!” Johansson’s alien siren as she hunts and In almost every scene, Johansson is To A Louse — Robert Burns, 1786 renders into meat any man foolish enough wonderful, her alien Venus Flytrap a sexy, to follow her home thinking he’s in for the almost serene presence, an unfeeling, There’s just not enough poetry in these night of his life. We see ourselves as she remote ideal of voluptuous femininity, pages so it’s appropriate, given Under The sees us and what she sees is often as self- capable of great cruelty (though never Skin’s west of Scotland setting and its deluded as the young woman Burns’ louse through malice) and compassion, whose subject matter — in the guise of a beautiful, has chosen for its nest. exposure to humanity baffles and infects enigmatic woman, an extraterrestrial Inducing an almost trance-like state her, her flowering sense of self ultimately (Scarlett Johansson) cruises the streets of of creeping horror and wonder through pruned as she gropes towards discovery. Glasgow luring men to a very nasty end, its glacial, beautiful abstraction, the film Dark, hypnotic, and squalidly beautiful, discovering a few truths about humanity ditches the overt politics and satire of Under The Skin is unique in today’s cinema, and developing her own identity and sense Faber’s novel in favour of deconstructing a head-scratching poetic riddle willing to of self along the way — to reference identity, female sexuality, masculine power, dazzle and disappoint audiences in equal Scotland’s Bard, Rabbie Burns. It also helps and the violence of the male gaze through measure. that Burns uses language as impenetrably Johansson’s interactions with a largely non- alien to most ears as Johansson’s willing professional, unsuspecting cast. She starts David Watson, and eager victims. off in control, she need only playfully ask David Watson is a freelance film hack who writes Writing in Broad Scots dialect, the subject one ardent suitor, ‘Do you fancy me?’ and for Screenjabber, What Culture, Movie Ramblings, FilmJuice, and Verite magazine. You can read him of Burns’ fascination is a louse, a common he’s signing his own death warrant with the at http://filmthug.blogspot.co.uk/or http://www. insect at home in a gentlewoman’s bonnet Cyrano-like compliment ‘Aye, you’re brand filmjuice.com/author/david-watson/ or follow him where it hunts and feeds, forcing the poet new!’ Little does he suspect how right he on Twitter @filmthug to the realisation that ultimately we are all is; we witnessed her birth at the beginning E-mail: [email protected] just prey, meat for parasites, and to lament of the film and over its course we observe that if we could but see ourselves through her slow evolution from dispassionate the predator’s eyes, we’d be humbled. Nine predator to uncomprehending prey as she years in the gestation, Jonathan Glazer’s learns to feel empathy, curiosity, and even DOI: 10.3399/bjgp14X679840

British Journal of General Practice, May 2014 251