Getting Under the Skin

Reflections past and present on Jonathan Glazer's visceral opus.

Under the Skin (2013)

I wrote the first part of this essay six years ago, after having watched Under the Skin for the first time:

Do not ask me what Under the Skin is about. Not because I cannot be bothered—I simply do not know. Unlike many of the pieces I will be publishing here, this review will not try to understand the film itself. Quite frankly only Jonathan Glazer knows. But I can talk about how Under the Skin made me feel, and the waves of emotion that flowed through me as I gazed on in curious awe. It took me far too long to sit down and watch it. Even stranger is that I had listened to the score hundreds of times before seeing it. I adore Mica Levi’s music, especially for Jackie and Monos, and I put on the Under the Skin soundtrack whenever I want atmospheric background music. An odd choice, given the unsettling dissonance of the unique string effects and throbbing electronics. Nonetheless, its beauty is entrancing.

I finally watched it when the filmmaker Zoe Black selected Under the Skin as their choice to discuss on the podcast. I immediately assumed that they meant the 2013 film starring Scarlett Johansson. This made me uneasy, having come to the conclusion that I might never watch it. If it had not transpired that Zoe wanted to discuss Carine Adler’s 1997 film of the same title, I may not have watched this film after all. What had been putting me off was that every review I had read praised it despite the fact that the critic did not understand it. This seemed to me a failure on the part of the writers, in that a film which cannot be understood surely must have some flaw within its makeup. As watching Under the Skin reveals, there is simply no other way to review the film itself. It is gorgeously enigmatic, and I would not have it any other way. It invites to delve beneath the surface and wade in its murky streams.