by MATTHEW HAYS

There are scenes in Mysterious Skin, the latest film from auteur Gregg Araki, that will disturb even the most jaded filmgoer. Sequences involving young hustlers that evoke some of the seedier scenes in Midnight Cowboy, John Schlesinger’s landmark X-rated Oscar winner, a brutal rape sequence and depictions of child abuse.

And that jarring content, reports Araki, makes the response of mainstream critics to his deeply personal film all the more surprising. “Mysterious Skin has obviously struck a chord with a great many people, including critics I would have expected to dislike it,” he says, on the line from his California home. “Ebert & Roeper, People magazine—some of the most mainstream people you can think of have embraced the film.”

Mysterious Skin is based on the highly acclaimed novel by Scott Heim. The story recounts the sexual abuse two boys suffered at the hands of a creepily charismatic baseball coach when they were wee lads. The film follows their lives 10 years later, as they have dealt with the abuse in vastly different manners; one (Brady Corbet) has blacked out the experiences from his memory, choosing instead to believe that he was abducted by a UFO; the other (fiercely played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, unrecognizable from his role on the vapid sitcom Third Rock From the Sun) has become a shark-like street hustler, selling his body for chump change. As the story progresses, we realize they are destined to meet up and reconcile their scarring pasts in the final frames of the film.

Moody blues

Araki is used to dark turf—his CV includes such titles as The Living End and The Doom Generation, after all—but what was a new challenge was adapting someone else’s material. “In a certain way, it was easier, as the story and character arcs are already supplied for you. But taking a 300-page book, especially one I have such respect for, and figuring out how to convert it into a 99-minute movie, that was tough. It’s about translating things into voiceover, montage, blackouts. The book is so beautifully rendered—for me, it was about being utterly faithful.”

For Araki, mood was everything in the pre-production planning and subsequent shooting phase. He showed his crew In the Mood for Love, Badlands and Days of Heaven as examples of where he wanted to take Mysterious Skin. “The book is extremely lyrical and poetic,” he argues. “Cinematically, I wanted to create something that was equally poetic. The book and its story has this larger than life quality, this sheer elegance. Everything about the film had to be carefully composed, the colours controlled. The temptation might have been to go for a digital, murky, hand-held look. No—this had to be beautiful and 100 per cent 35 mm.”

Brutally tender

One of the film’s pivotal scenes is also the most talked about—a rape sequence between Gordon-Levitt and one of his johns elicited gasps during a press screening at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, when Mysterious Skin premiered. “Definitely, that was the most difficult scene to shoot. It’s one of the film’s darkest moments. But there is nothing gratuitous about the scene. It’s an intimate part of that character’s journey—it’s about his death and rebirth.”

For all its brutality, there are also moments of incredible tenderness and humanity in Araki’s latest feature. Having set the film in ’91, Araki captures much of the AIDS angst of that moment in history: one john removes his clothing for Gordon-Levitt, revealing a series of bright purple Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions—a symptom clearly signifying AIDS infection. Rather than recoiling in horror, Gordon-Levitt strokes the man’s back, after the john explains that all he really wants is to be touched.

Araki has often dodged labels, eschewing the idea that he’s a groundbreaking gay filmmaker. “It’s funny, because for the younger generation, I really don’t think they care at all whether someone’s gay or straight. To them, it’s simply not an issue. It’s great that my work has been important to some people—that’s why I make movies. But I’ve always thought of myself as a filmmaker. Yes, I’m in a relationship with a man. But I’ve never thought of myself as a spokesperson.” n

Mysterious Skin opens Friday, June 10

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