Scott LeBrun
Jeremy Cooper plays Seth Dove, an impressionable and imaginative youngster living in the American prairies of the 1950s. He comes to believe that a mysterious local English widow named Dolphin Blue (Lindsay Duncan) must be a vampire, based on what his father Luke (Duncan Fraser) has related to him. (The old man is a fan of pulp novels.) Therefore, Seth becomes alarmed when his older brother Cameron (Viggo Mortensen), a military veteran, falls in love with the widow."The Reflecting Skin" is a striking, unusual film, marking the filmmaking debut for Philip Ridley, a British playwright, author, and screenwriter. It's definitely not to all tastes, and certainly not for people expecting a traditional horror film. It depicts a stark world, seen through this childs' eyes, in which adults are often extremely messed up and children are victimized. Ridley's dialogue is literate and amusing, and the actors do seem to be enjoying themselves reciting these lines. The atmosphere is very impressive, with Ridley taking advantage of all these open spaces and endless fields of yellow. Dick Pope did the very efficient cinematography. Another memorable element is the music score by Nick Bicat. It's haunting and helps to draw you into this story that is sure to get under the skin of some of its viewers.Fans of Mortensen should be aware that he doesn't show up for over 40 minutes, but he provides an engaging presence as a young man with little patience for his kid brother. Duncan is absolutely amazing and her character truly does seem to be living in some other universe. Sheila Moore chews the scenery as the shrewish Dove mother, Canadian character actor Fraser is fine as the father with a grim, sordid past, and young Cooper offers a believable performance.Consistently unpredictable, "The Reflecting Skin" does have a fair bit going for it, and it's worth a look for buffs searching for something different and interesting.Seven out of 10.
highwaytourist
This is one of the most dreary, unpleasant, and pretentious movies I've ever seen. Every character in it is a freak of one kind or another. Is there any place in real life that's entirely populated by people like this? The scenes include a frog inflated and exploded, a man commits suicide in front of his wife and child, a crazed mother abusing her younger son and making a pass at her older son, and a child seeing a woman stimulate herself. Who wants to watch that? Oh, I admit that there is some very good atmosphere and that the photography and music are right. But so what? I didn't enjoy one moment of this film. The culprits who made it are just determined to rub the audiences' noses in the gutter. I could feel their contempt for me and everyone who watched this movie. To those who enjoyed this movie, it's your life and I'm glad I'm not part of it.
Fuzzy Wuzzy
The Reflecting Skin is a bizarre and equally disturbing movie-experience combining beautiful cinematography with a really weird and screwed-up story that's viewed from an abused child's peculiar slant on things.Though not meant for all tastes, The Reflecting Skin is one of those films that's just too odd to be outrightly dismissed.If you enjoy films that are offbeat, surreal and nightmarish in nature, then here's one whose story and imagery creates a very dark and haunting atmosphere set against the dazzling brightness of rural Idaho in the 1950s.The innocence of a 9 year-old boy named Seth is stripped away as he closely observes the strange and macabre characters that are around him.Life for this troubled, young boy living on the outskirts of a small, isolated farm-town is magnified beyond reality into a weird, quasi-fantasy that directly challenges the viewer's idealized notions about the naivety of childhood and the rationality of a child's thinking.A lot of people will find at this film's conclusion that just too many questions were deliberately left unanswered. This is sure to leave many viewers (as it did with myself) both annoyed and dissatisfied.But, yet, even though there were a number of places where The Reflecting Skin literally fell flat on its face out of sheer absurdity, the unique strangeness if its overall story is still well-worth a view.
ananias73
In 1990 British author and screenwriter Philip Ridley gave us one of the best (in my opinion among with "The Spirit of the Beehive" and "Let the Right One In"), deeply sensational and very frightening portrait of childhood full of cruel youths, abused children (Ridley avoids to shock the audience, it's preferable to horrify it as the black car appears through sun illusions - special kudos to the magnificent cinematography by Dick Pope), desperate people (the father, the English lady etc.) in their widely shut worlds of loneliness and fear from their own "crimes" of the past who decide to drink gasoline and light the fire (!) or they've been transformed into vampires through 10 years old Seth's eyes. A poetic, Gothic tale about lust, death, human nature and urban life, disturbing for some, to be praised for others (like Lynch, Jondorowksy and me). Sometimes (at least) is almost a hell to be an angel in life...
AD
