Mysterious Skin

Aroview: An acclaimed realisation of 'New Queer Cinema' dir. Araki's early promise, with an uncompromising fable based around a teenage hustler who is connected by secrets of the past with a young man obsessed and disturbed by an 'alien abduction' incident from his childhood.

Based on the 1995 novel by Scott Heim, this is perhaps the most daring of recent American films to plumb the subject of paedophilia, mainly by examining the unfolding subjectivity of the abused. Struck in stylised images that are bold and woozily eroticised, this has its heart in the right place, though its aftertaste ain't exactly sweet.

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