Not Even Scarlett Johansson Can Inject Life into “Under The Skin”.

The pul­chri­tudi­nous Scar­lett Johansson.

Under The Skin has divid­ed crit­ics straight down the mid­dle, with some declaim­ing it a mas­ter­piece, and oth­ers tear­ing their hair out. Which is odd. As it’s pants. Nei­ther remote­ly inter­est­ing nor in any way offensive.

It’s per­fect­ly styl­ish, and com­pe­tent­ly shot, as you’d expect from an accom­plished com­mer­cials and music video direc­tor. And Scar­lett Johans­son is as tal­ent­ed as she is allur­ing­ly volup­tuous, so the whole thing is sig­nif­i­cant­ly more engag­ing than it has any right to be. But once again we find our­selves back with Gertrude Stein’s famous com­ment on Cal­i­for­nia; there’s no there, there.

All you get are a num­ber of scenes that a beau­ti­ful alien drifts in and out off that sug­gest any num­ber of pos­si­ble narratives.

Nicole Kid­man was sim­i­lar­ly wast­ed in “Birth” (’04).

When you’re mak­ing com­mer­cials or, espe­cial­ly music videos, pre­sent­ing arche­types and sug­gest­ing nar­ra­tives is won­der­ful­ly evoca­tive and end­less­ly appeal­ing, as his video for Radiohead’s Street Spir­it (Fade Out) ably demon­strates here.

But when you’re telling a full sto­ry over 90 min­utes or more, mere­ly sug­gest­ing a num­ber of pos­si­ble nar­ra­tives that involve arche­types drawn with big, bold brush­strokes becomes bor­ing, tedious and even­tu­al­ly irri­tat­ing. As Ben Wheat­ley showed in A Field In Eng­land, reviewed ear­li­er here.

This is Glazer’s third fea­ture, after the dis­ap­point­ing­ly con­ven­tion­al, bog stan­dard mock­ney gang­ster flick Sexy Beast in 2000, and the icy Birth in 2004. As with the lat­ter, Glaz­er once again pens the script. And as Michel Gondry and so many oth­ers have demon­strat­ed, if you want to grad­u­ate from com­mer­cials to fea­ture films, you real­ly have to hook your­self up with a prop­er screen­writer. You need some­one to give a body on which to hang your pret­ty clothes.

So how do you account for some of the stel­lar reviews Under The Skin has got? What are we to make of what Don­ald Clarke, one of, in fact the only film crit­ic worth read­ing in Ire­land, had to say in the Irish Times here?

Godard declaimed here in his 1967 film’ “the crit­ic is as close to the artist as the his­to­ri­an is to the man of action”. Godard of course began as a crit­ic on the Cahiers du Cin­ema.

Well, film crit­ics watch films under very spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances. They go to at least 3 or 4 screen­ings a week, for free obvi­ous­ly, and in the process they inevitably become pal­ly with the dis­trib­u­tors, and often the actors and film mak­ers themselves.

So on the one hand they are much more blasé about the films they see, and on the oth­er they try to find some­thing nice to say about them. The few reli­able film crit­ics, and Clarke is one, spend a great deal of time and effort guard­ing against this. But I respect­ful­ly sug­gest  he’ll be a tad embar­rassed about this review in years to come. If at all he ever thinks about it.

For most peo­ple, watch­ing a film involves a rit­u­al and a plea­sur­able amount of time and effort. Whether that means get­ting up and going out to the cin­e­ma, get­ting your hands on a dvd or going to the trou­ble of down­load­ing it. That invest­ment of time and effort deserves to be reward­ed. And any­one that invests 3 or 4 hours of their life in get­ting to and then watch­ing Under The Skin is going to be thor­ough­ly irri­tat­ed. And some­what surprised.

You can see the trail­er for Under The Skin here.

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