Synopsis
"The summer I was 8 years old, five hours disappeared from my life. Five hours. Lost. Gone without a trace." Mysterious Skin begins with a narration of a soft-voiced Brian at the age of 18, unravelling the story of two boys whose ongoing suffering goes back to 1981, in a small town of Hutchinson, Kansas. Brian and Neil are sexually abused by their baseball coach in 1981, but Brian develops amnesia blocking out the 5 hours with his coach while Neil has a totally different version of memory. Adapted from a novel by Scott HEIM, it is ARAKI's first film to tell a story originated from other than himself. The sensitive issue of child sexual abuse has been employed in recent criminal thrillers; however, ARAKI does not track down the details of the event nor pinpoint the therapeutic process in which they are cured. Instead, the movie contemplates how the boys deal with reminiscence, sweet or painful, by no means can be put behind. Familar from Brick released in 2007, Joseph GORDON-LEVITT performs Neil in a fresh look. (Jin PARK)