alien

mai-mai's latest collection didn't show anything promising, at least from the deck of current movies. so i browsed on their oldies collection and stumbled upon mysterious skin and decided to give it a try. this is a story of two boys who in their early formative years, experienced sexual abuse from their baseball coach. the movie's central theme is about accepting your past, making peace with what happened and moving on. the actors were very good, especially joseph gordon-levitt.

what was striking about the film is the downright honesty of the movie's characterization of the pain and loss of innocence that stemmed from a mistaken love from a pedophiliac baseball coach. levitt's neil sensed early that there was something wrong about his relationship with coach bill, but true to his age, was tricked to believe that what his coach was doing was only "out of love". although he and his mother (elisabeth shue) had a close relationship, the somewhat dysfunctional orientation of a promiscuous mother might have led to neil's ultimate demise as a kid. since then, he led a life of a young hustler, selling his body to old rural patrons of young male flesh-peddler. he has a close friend in wendy (michelle trachtenberg), who knows his trades, not self-righteous but closes in on what neil needs, love and support.

brian, one of neil's teammates, also experienced the same thing from the same man. while neil took the more controversial route, brian was a nerdy kid whose fascination with aliens, alien abduction and the whole alien shebang, masked the inner demon that he wanted to exorcise but couldn't zero in on what was the struggle all about. although i think what happened to brian was a bit less depressing primarily because he didn’t find himself in flesh trade, he was also struggling due to the black hole in his memory… something he long wanted to find clues that he can piece together to somewhat make himself complete. this search led him to meet eccentric avalyn, who claims that she was also abducted by aliens but turned out to be another repressed individual who also found an outlet in alienology.

brian met eric, one of neil's best friends and is in love with neil. through this, brian finally met neil, who gave him the bright light of realization – both of them were victims of abuse. the movie's tagline of "Five hours, lost, gone without a trace..." was now explained, became clear to brian that this was what happened. the movie also suggested that brian's dad knew about what happened, but instead of helping his son, turned his back and didn't do anything.

the movie was in a sense, not mysterious at all. bad things happen to good people. individuals deal with such experiences in divergent manners, some face it blankly, going with the flow, while others mask it with bogus outlets, which can be literally out of this world. families that appear happy also deal with grave situations… true that everybody has their fair share of problematic situations. the theme of the movie was serious, but it's unapologetic way of presenting what might be happening in the real world, while rebuffing preaching spectral morals was what made it good. the topic could have been easily melodramatic, but the filmmaker (gregg araki) was successful in keeping it grounded ala indie cine; quiet but graphic, honest and raw, powerful and very good.