/ Film Class #56 / Under the Skin / Jonathan Glazer /

In Michel Faber's Under the skin novel, we, humans are just a link in the food chain. Screening of this novel was accepted by British director Jonathan Glazer, and the role of extraterrestrial, which hunts for male specimens of human flesh and uses her own sex appeal is played by Scarlett Johansson.
By acting on sexual accessibility and suggesting her own promiscuity, she lurks men without trouble. They thus become the victims of their own lust and sexual desire, and by inversion of the role, pointing a middle finger to misogyny and sexism is boldly directed.

Under the skin is an impressive representation of art-film, which is not for everyone's eyes anyway; this film is intended for the audience who understands the ambience and visuality of fabulas, as well as those endowed with patience and are ready to self-read the hidden meanings.

THE NOVEL

It's a novel of SF genre that has Isserley as the protagonist, an alien that was subjected to an operation to become human-looking and able to walk upright on two legs. It goes to Earth with the task of supplying a hidden alien farm with members of her"species" with healthy specimens of "vodselovina", that is, human flesh.
Isserley is, therefore, a hunter that circles the Scottish highways in search of male specimens, who are then taken to the farm, where they, after killing and processing, are sent to space ships on their home planet where they are served as expensive food to a higher, aristocratic aliens.

By its dynamic, violent and sexual explicitity, the author fulfills the critical implications of enriched motifs of double inversion. In the novel, we, people, are a link in the food chain, that is, a species that serves as food (which actually puts us in the role of animals that we, humans,  are exterminating for our own food).
In addition, in hunting for male specimens, Isserley is using her sex-appeal, lowering men to the level of sexual object. However, if such explicit sexism is read as an inversion of what is common, it receives the elements of subversiveness, becoming in fact a criticism of the misogyny.

FILM

Adaptation of this novel two years ago has been accepted by British screenwriter and director Jonathan Glazer, who is known for his brutal furious debut in which one of the most striking roles was Ben Kingsley. This film was called "Sexy Beast".

Jonathan Glazer, entrusted the role of an alien to Scarlett Johansson, an alien sex-beast who is hunting for male specimens of human flesh intended to exert alien appetite.
Adapting Faber's novel Jonathan Glazer (in collaboration with screenwriter Walter Campbell) took the skeleton of the novel and, by avoiding the exploration of the story and throwing out large parts of it, left the viewer to entertain meaningfully by impressive scenes. Thus, for example, heroine's extraterrestrial nature, all the way to its tragic, violent end, remains only on allusions, just as without explanation remains the function of male bodies after their death.



With great attention to the visual component, the director combines two contradictory procedures - the largest part of the film (heroine circulation in the streets of the vans in the search for "male meat") was captured by a hyperrealistic maneuvers which Glazer contrasts with highly stylized and extremely impressive sequences of heroine seduction and the killing of men. With this, he creates refined, dreamy, unambiguous atmosphere, but also achieves a powerful sensory charge, in which elements of eroticism and horror are mixed.

Scarlett Johansson proves to be a great choice for the role of a mysterious heroine of extremely sensuality, behind whose sexual accessibility, until the end of the film, lies the psychological unavailability.  But the insight into her psyche comes suddenly, unobtrusively and unexpectedly.

This was my translation from Croatian to English from Lupiga by B.Alajbegovic