One of the Best Films of the 21St Century (thus far, 2025)
The visionary director Jonathan Glazer likes to take his time. By Hollywood (and U.K) standards, he is incredibly slow. After making a splashy debut in 2000 with “Sexy Beast,” which offered a vastly different role for Ben Kingsley, it took four years for Glazer’s second film, “Birth,” starring Nicole Kidman. (See below)
Grade: A (***** out of *****)
Now, nine years later, he has made another striking and original feature, Under the Skin, an experiential and experimental adaptation of Michel Faber’s famed 2000 novel, “The Crimson Petal and the White.”
The strange, twisted, dark source material, adapted to the screen by Glazer and Walter Campbell, is most suitable for the director’s offbeat and idiosyncratic sensibility, which cannot be compared to that of any other director.
Indeed, Glazer has both pared down and refocused the source material, to the point where rhythm and texture are far more important than structure or content.
Like other independently-minded director, Glazer’s work depends on the festival and art house circuits. Under the Skin played at both the Telluride and Toronto Film Fests.
Scarlett Johansson, who may be one of the busiest actresses in Hollywood now, plays a mysterious, voluptuous woman—sort of “the women who fell down to earth,” in this existential tale about sexual politics and other philosophical matters. “Under the Skin” is visually arresting film, raising some provocative questions without the burden or responsibility to resolve them.
Critics who have only praised the film’s visual and sound properties, which are admittedly impressive, are missing the point of a film that’s richly dense in text and subtext, and replete with ambiguous meanings. In other words, “Under the Skin” is not just a bizarre or a curio item—it’s much more ambitious than that.
The film is dark, sinister, and challenging from the first scene, nocturnal scene, in which a motorcycle is seen speeding and a body being picked up. In an all-white room, a nude woman then undresses that body and puts on her clothes.
As soon as she lands, she asks for directions. She drives a white van, cruising around Glasgow, Scotland, stopping now and then to speak to various men. Some of the men who follow her suddenly find themselves sinking and disappearing.
The next man she picks up transforms himself, which is followed by an encounter with yet another guy, who looks like the Elephant Man.
As the tale unfolds, the woman becomes more passive and more vulnerable, but the writers only describe these processes of transformation (perhaps even radical transfiguration), without explaining their reasoning.
Under the Skin is not a conventional horror feature, relying on exposition, psychology, or motivation, but there is enough in it to stimulate the mind and provoke feeling, largely due to Glazer’s astutely exact mise-en-scene and striking imagery.
Made to look as plain and ordinary, Scarlett Johansson offers a multi-nuanced performance in a tough and demanding roles that depends on subtle gestures and moves rather than words and dialogue.
Both allusive (with scenes that would make David Lynch’s surrealist horror proud) and elusive (refusing to define the lethal femme fatale in conventional attributes of character and motivation), Under the Skin is a visionary film with undeniable power based on its hypnotic mix of shape-shifting sinuous visuals and eerie discordant soundscapes.
End Note
Of the four he has directed, Under the Skin is without a doubt his most disturbing and enigmatic features, one of this century’s most original horror movies, which stubbornly refuses to be compared to any other item of its ever popular genre.
Critics should never dictate or recommend directors–good and bad–the pacing at which they work, the scale of their output, and the genres they choose.
Yet, considering the caliber of his talent, as a craftsman and artist, its shocking to realize that Jonathan Glazer has made only four features in 25 years.
Cast
Scarlett Johansson as the Female; Jessica Mance portrays her in nalien form
Jeremy McWilliams as the Bad Man
Lynsey Taylor Mackay as the Dead Woman
Dougie McConnell as Pick-Up Man
Kevin McAlinden as First Victim
Kryštof Hádek as the Swimmer
Roy Armstrong as Father at Beach
Alison Chand as Mother at Beach
Joe Szula as Man at Club
Paul Brannigan as Andrew
Scott Dymond as the Nervous Man
Adam Pearson as the Deformed Man
Dave Acton as the Logger
Credits
Production: Nick Wechsler Productions, JW Films
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Screenwriters: Walter Campbell, Glazer, based on the novel by Michel Faber
Producers: James Wilson, Nick Wechsler
Executive producers: Tessa Ross, Reno Antoniades, Walter Campbell, Claudia Bluemhuber, Ian Hutchinson, Florian Dargel
Director of photography: Daniel Landin
Production designer: Chris Oddy
Costume designer: Steven Noble
Editor: Paul Watts
Music: Mica Levi
Running time: 107 Minutes
Release dates: August 29, 2013 (Telluride Fest), March 14, 2014 (UK), April 4, 2014 (US)
Budget: £8 million (about $13 million)
Box office: $7.2 million
