Except, y'know, Upstream was about people struggling to make sense of something that had wrecked their lives to perpetuate its own (and taking back control, eventually; it's essentially a survivorship narrative). Under The Skin is about the thing that wrecks peoples' lives itself (who turns out, ultimately, to be a powerless victim as well). It's also about Jonathan Demme's hidden camera obsession with filming ScarJo actually picking up random real blokes in Glasgow, who didn't know they were being filmed at the time. And that's where it gets really, really creepy - and to me, stops being quite so interesting.
I watch Upstream, and it's inherently disturbing, and seemingly random things happen, but they're within a framework of narrative and the moments of grace are fixed so sharply against the darkness and confusion. You know Shane Carruthers does not let go control of what he's trying to do for a single second - up to and including how his films are released, at this point. Under the Skin just... doesn't. There's that obsession with incorporating 'real life' into a constructed narrative - only the narrative is then about watching Scarlett in disguise interacting with a load of people who don't recognise a ridiculously famous actress because she's out of context? So we're seeing Demme's version of 'real life' captured within the context of a narrative - and obviously at some point the 'non-actors' were told what was going on and became part of the constructed narrative.
The trouble with real life is that it's all so bloody uncinematic. Also, boring. And repetitive.
And, mostly, according to UTS, it's bleak and horrible.
I watch Upstream, and it's inherently disturbing, and seemingly random things happen, but they're within a framework of narrative and the moments of grace are fixed so sharply against the darkness and confusion. You know Shane Carruthers does not let go control of what he's trying to do for a single second - up to and including how his films are released, at this point. Under the Skin just... doesn't. There's that obsession with incorporating 'real life' into a constructed narrative - only the narrative is then about watching Scarlett in disguise interacting with a load of people who don't recognise a ridiculously famous actress because she's out of context? So we're seeing Demme's version of 'real life' captured within the context of a narrative - and obviously at some point the 'non-actors' were told what was going on and became part of the constructed narrative.
The trouble with real life is that it's all so bloody uncinematic. Also, boring. And repetitive.
And, mostly, according to UTS, it's bleak and horrible.
It's also taking a fraction of what is already a constructed narrative from Michael Faber's novel that was a tight multiple third person narrative (of both hunter and prey, with a background of an actual explained situation). The film then keeps a deliberately chilly distance from its subject, and then lets 'reality' play around with what little construct there is, so you're left with observations.
It feels odd, because I'm basically loathing most of the same things about Under The Skin that I loved in Upstream - the sound design, for one, which is so immersive, and which Shane Carruthers uses to unsettle and distract to such good effect. And yet UTS uses much the same techniques and they had the complete opposite result. Every track is crashingly loud and plaintively ominous, all the time. All of the magnified ambient sounds (planes and trains and traffic) are meant to represent the main character's difficulty processing the world - according to Demme - but really only serve to make it harder to process the scenes themselves.
It feels odd, because I'm basically loathing most of the same things about Under The Skin that I loved in Upstream - the sound design, for one, which is so immersive, and which Shane Carruthers uses to unsettle and distract to such good effect. And yet UTS uses much the same techniques and they had the complete opposite result. Every track is crashingly loud and plaintively ominous, all the time. All of the magnified ambient sounds (planes and trains and traffic) are meant to represent the main character's difficulty processing the world - according to Demme - but really only serve to make it harder to process the scenes themselves.
[It probably didn't help that I was sitting behind Freakishly Tall Guy at the screening, and spent the entire film either craning my neck or leaning to peer around his head taking up most of the screen. Never ever booking last minute middle of row seats ever again.]
So while SJ got to spend an awful lot of time stripping off and demonstrating a really rather impressive English accent, it was hard to actually classify the creature she was playing as a character at all. It feels a little like this is SF for people who don't really like SF - I mostly kept getting distracted by the technicalities (which were deliberately stripped out, I appreciate that), such as how she knows all this stuff in order to live in the world and drive around (driving does kind of require an understanding of how people's minds work, to a point) and deal with people and use language appropriately, and yet seems to be missing any kind of context within herself. These things are interconnected, surely.
Is it bad I would have probably preferred a film about the scarily efficient biker dudes? I get the impression they don't end up dead in ditches...
It's a horror film, more than anything, on a very basic level. It's about preying on human weakness and being completely impervious to any kind of lightness in the dark. We're watching an alien experience human society (kind of) but knowing nothing about them aside from, they're aliens and kind of maybe eat people? And really, do people taste that good that it's worth going to all this freaking trouble for (most notably the crack team of bikers, which made it all go very Dredd - and therefore almost fun - for a moment there.)? There are a hell of a lot of other edible creatures out that that don't need elaborate schemes to harvest... surely? There's not enough continuity in the experience to make sense of - why can she understand the concept of making sure her victims have no family or friends, but not the fact that the toddler might be an issue on the beach? In fact, why not take the bloody kid to join her catch too, seeing as it would be a much easier kill? Why the ceremony; why the ritual? There's lip service paid towards not attracting attention or getting caught, but there's no joined up plan.
Yeah... practicalities. This is not a film that's very interested in the why or the wherefore. It's just that the stuff it is interested in is so very narrow in focus, and doesn't really seem to have much to say. Glasgow is depressing! Kind of. Guys are surprisingly easy to tempt into your Van of Doom (and Black Swamp Room of Doom!) when you look like Scarlett Johannsen! And the real irony being that the the book features a named protagonist (Isserley) who has a past and a story, and... doesn't look a damn think like Scarlett. In fact, considering she has to work around the part where she appears unsettlingly non-human (her hands and feet and eyes are noticeably wrong to most people, however disguised) with what are obviously surgically added breasts intended to distract. Book-Isserley looks somewhat freakish to everyone, her own kind and humans alike - and it's made clear she was previously someone of a lower caste who traded on her looks, and has been mutilated and used herself.
And, mostly, I saw someone using this as an example of a feminist film the other day and I just... can't see that. Unless it's somewhere in the irony of a female-coded character using her looks in a predatory way (there's no sense that she benefits from her actions personally) and being punished for being female/not being female enough (I've seen the last few scenes read either way. I have no clue what the book does, but then I'm not sure the film has any clue what the book does either).The final scenes are almost too obviously a symbolically trans narrative - being murdered because your genitalia is not what someone else assumed it to be is depressingly common. Extending that to being non-human as well is... another level. It may be reductive, but it doesn't feel feminist to me.
Upstream, interestingly, does and doesn't feel - the assaults themselves are unclear and not gendered the same way; the one we see involves male characters physically and mentally abusing a female character, but it's made clear that there are male victims as well, and there are women responsible for collecting the orchids, and it's all perpetuated by... something completely ungendered and alien. The assaults are never seen to be sexual (they just involve every other method of wrecking someone's life), but the coding is there: the kidnapping in a dark alley, the physical trauma.
More importantly, it does have a clear survivorship narrative there; a taking back of agency with a metaphorical shot to the head, and of closure and a sense of healing initiated by the female protagonist (with piglets. I freaking love that there are piglets.). It's almost suggested the romantic narrative in Upstream is ultimately sacrificed for there to be closure; that its role was to help them survive together until the cycle could be broken and its place (at least for Kris) has been taken by something more... concrete? Meaningful? It's certainly something that breaks the cycle rather than perpetuating it, and it's something that releases her from being emotionally held hostage to external events any longer - she's no longer traumatised on that level. I mean, obviously pigs don't live forever, either, but... there are always more piglets, apparently.
And, mostly, I saw someone using this as an example of a feminist film the other day and I just... can't see that. Unless it's somewhere in the irony of a female-coded character using her looks in a predatory way (there's no sense that she benefits from her actions personally) and being punished for being female/not being female enough (I've seen the last few scenes read either way. I have no clue what the book does, but then I'm not sure the film has any clue what the book does either).The final scenes are almost too obviously a symbolically trans narrative - being murdered because your genitalia is not what someone else assumed it to be is depressingly common. Extending that to being non-human as well is... another level. It may be reductive, but it doesn't feel feminist to me.
Upstream, interestingly, does and doesn't feel - the assaults themselves are unclear and not gendered the same way; the one we see involves male characters physically and mentally abusing a female character, but it's made clear that there are male victims as well, and there are women responsible for collecting the orchids, and it's all perpetuated by... something completely ungendered and alien. The assaults are never seen to be sexual (they just involve every other method of wrecking someone's life), but the coding is there: the kidnapping in a dark alley, the physical trauma.
More importantly, it does have a clear survivorship narrative there; a taking back of agency with a metaphorical shot to the head, and of closure and a sense of healing initiated by the female protagonist (with piglets. I freaking love that there are piglets.). It's almost suggested the romantic narrative in Upstream is ultimately sacrificed for there to be closure; that its role was to help them survive together until the cycle could be broken and its place (at least for Kris) has been taken by something more... concrete? Meaningful? It's certainly something that breaks the cycle rather than perpetuating it, and it's something that releases her from being emotionally held hostage to external events any longer - she's no longer traumatised on that level. I mean, obviously pigs don't live forever, either, but... there are always more piglets, apparently.
