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PLOT: Two youths recount their tragic lives as abused children, starting the summer when they were both eight years old and fell prey to their Little League baseball coach.
It is difficult to imagine a film that feels less like summer, and more like the winter of our discontent, than Gregg Araki's Mysterious Skin.
Call it the most extreme form of alternative programming, in this case something brilliant but disturbing.
It is not just that the film is about child abuse, although that certainly is a tough subject to contemplate on a sunny summer day. It is that Araki (known for Splendor, Nowhere, The Doom Generation, Totally F---ed Up) has crafted a film in which the life lessons are blatantly obvious, and yet the film possesses an unbearable lightness of being.
It moves like a bird, soaring effortlessly through the lives of its protagonists as if nothing of import was really taking place. The lush visuals, the haunting music from both Harold Budd and former Cocteau Twins guitarist Robin Guthrie, the quiet tone and the measured pace combine to create a lyrical fantasy world. It is hypnotic, even soothing.
At the same time, though, our brains are screaming. We know from the story line that we are living in a nightmarish reality. To say the least, this is unsettling -- and should be.
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The storytelling device is deceptively simple. We hear two youths tell their personal experiences with the benefit of hindsight, taking us back to incidents that started in 1981. That summer, when each boy was eight years old, both fell prey to the sexual predation of their Little League baseball coach (played by Bill Sage as a charming man who hid his monster deep inside).
Araki never sensationalizes the situation, one way or the other. Nor is any explicit nudity or sex shown in these early passages. But we get the idea -- and it is easy to be disgusted.
The film then chronicles in meticulous detail the arc each boy follows in the next 10 years, before they meet again in 1991.
One boy (now played by Brady Corbet in a stunningly controlled, selfless performance) has morphed into a male hustler who has packed his heart in ice and remembers his abuser with naive, misguided fondness. But he does at least remember.
The other boy (just as well played, although not as obviously, by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has blanked out the abuse. Fragments haunt his dreams. He begins to believe that the blackouts, and his nosebleeds, were due to alien abductions (the kid lives in Kansas, so who can blame him for being susceptible?).
In key support roles, Michelle Trachtenberg, Jeff Licon, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Lisa Long, Chris Mulkey and even former leading lady Elisabeth Shue contribute strong performances.
As a story, the two boys' lives will once again cross over, for better or for worse. As a film, Mysterious Skin remains elusive on some levels but it does one remarkable thing: It allows us to understand the high price that the victims pay.
If this shattering insight allows real-life child abuse victims to be treated more sensitively, more humanely, then Araki has made a miracle that deserves to join the drama The Woodsman and the documentary Capturing The Friedmans on a shelf of films dealing with the darkest parts of the human condition.
(This film is rated 18-A)