About this Event
Sunday May 10, 2pm Under the Skin ( Jonathan Glazer United Kingdom 2013 108 mins)
What would a truly alien film be like? How might an extraterrestrial experience our world for the first time, from Black Forest gâteau to Tommy Cooper? These are some of the questions posed by Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Birth, The Zone of Interest) in his enigmatic and surreal third feature, where dialogue takes a backseat to stark, minimalist imagery, eerie sound design and Mica Levi’s sparse, unsettling score.
Loosely adapted from the debut novel by Dutch-born, Australian-raised Michel Faber, Under the Skin adopts elements of its source material while adding new ideas and inviting ambiguity. “I absolutely didn’t want to film the book,” Glazer said. “But I still wanted to make the book a film.” Scarlett Johansson plays a mysterious Woman driving through Scotland, picking up solitary men and leading them to their doom. Where Faber’s novel unfolds as a darkly comic satire on animal exploitation, Glazer strips away the Woman’s interior life and comfortable exposition so the audience encounters the world as she does: fragmentary, uncanny and newly strange. The production itself mirrors the film’s themes of surveillance and predation; many of the scenes in which the Woman picks up men were filmed using hidden cameras, with non-actors unaware they were in a movie until after the fact.
Met with boos at its Venice premiere and divisive reviews (Henry Fitzherbert of The Daily Express wrote, “It didn't get under my skin, just on my nerves”), the film was nevertheless championed by critics and filmmakers alike - both Sofia Coppola and Denis Villeneuve have named it among the greatest films of the 21st century. Now widely regarded as a modern masterpiece, Under the Skin lingers as a haunting exploration of desire, loneliness, exploitation, the beauty of the Scottish countryside, and what it means to be human.
This session will be presented by Damien Spiccia, who will host a discussion following the screening.
Michel Faber’s Under the Skin is available in paperback, kindle and as an audiobook.
Doors/Bar1.00pm Film 2.00pm
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The Backlot Perth, 21 Simpson Street, West Perth, Australia
AUD 15.00
