Under the Skin: Curiosity and Living in a World Consumed by Chaos

by Christopher Barr │POSTED ON DECEMBER 13, 2014

“The eyes are the window to your soul.”

– William Shakespeare

Spoiler Alert!: This organic film is a true cinematic experience so please view the film, if you haven't already, before reading any further.

Under the Skin, a breathtaking film adaptation of the Michel Faber novel of the same name is a wonderfully mysterious erotic film about an alien that takes on the form of a beautiful young woman and hunts her prey on the damp streets of Glasgow, Scotland.  The visually unique and stunning film follows this indifferent being as she lures her unsuspecting lonely victims into an otherworldly liquid chamber for processing.  This subcutaneous alien, simply known as Laura, as a consequence of inhabiting a foreign body, and experiencing a life through human eyes, becomes a victim herself of something we all hold dear, our humanity.  She begins to feel and in some cases, to enjoy this human body, but that fraction of joy soon manifests itself into fear which leads to vulnerability and then exposure.

The oddly disturbing but equally fascinating film opens with her creation, her upload into human form.  In the most surrealist point in the film, we see circular rings in a void forming what soon becomes a spherical eyeball.  We hear screeches and reverberating pitches that begin to focus and tune into human speech.  This would be similar to tuning a guitar or a piano as the linguistic nuances of the English language come into fruition. 

A mysterious man on a motorcycle carries the limp body of a woman, placing her in the back of a cargo van.  Laura stands naked within this brightly lit void and removes the clothing from the girl, near death, staring at her.  This girl is an exact copy of Laura; she looks up at Laura as tears uncontrollably escape her eyes, resulting from her allowing human emotion to creep into her consciousness and consume her prime directive.  She was clearly an earlier version that like Laura will soon see, went out into the world to collect bodies for processing in their liquid chamber and subsequently became too attached to the fate of her prey, thus developing empathy.  When this timorous girl stares up at Laura in retrospect after seeing the film, says a lot not only of Laura’s inevitable doom but of her expendable worth to the overall project that they are there to execute.

Laura, ignorant of this girl’s emotional state, removes her clothing as if she was already dead, putting the clothing on herself and then examines an ant crawl along her finger.  This ant, possessing an intimidating appearance in itself but yet is weak and fragile, is a warning to Laura’s overall fate.  That ant and Laura’s instant curiosity of it has set in motion a series of events that, like the poor hapless alien near death on the floor, Laura is destined to become yet again another casualty of their project on earth, or where ever else they go for that matter in the universe.

A number of space ships take off from the rooftop of a skyscraper, cloaked within the clouds.  Then as Laura sets out on her mission she first must fit in, she must assimilate herself to the environment thus creating a sort of camouflage so she can blend in.  She soon discovers in a mall mankind’s superficial view of the female body with the make-up and fashionable clothing.  She gets herself a fur coat and while sitting in her newly acquired van, she applies red lipstick to her lips, preparing herself as bait to her predictably sexually hungry male prey. 

Laura sets out on the hunt, driving along the streets of Glasgow impassively studying the people going about their day for their calorific value.  She seeks out alone men and attempts to seduce them, asking them questions about themselves.  She smiles and makes them feel liked before inviting them back to an apartment building or house, the location of the chamber changes throughout the film.  Once inside, a possible other dimension, she walks ahead of them while she removes her clothing, erotically pulling them toward her with her gaze.  The male victim, in some sort of suggestive trance, removes his own clothing as he is understandably drawn to her.  

Here the film also explores the tunnel vision men often have when their focus is on beauty and sex, and nothing else, thus blinding them from the reality of the world.  The space they are in is black, it's some sort of alien chamber with a floor that gives way to a liquid substance similar to the color and consistency of oil.  The man slowly descends into the liquid, oblivious of the trap; he continues to draw himself toward Laura who smiles at him with a lascivious gaze.  We later see a man that she's lured into the chamber float in the liquid as we see her walk over the surface, unaffected by the liquid.  The man, naked with an erection, looks around and sees another naked man floating in the distance, that man soon is broken down into some sort of slug for processing.  All that remains of him is his skin, floating in the water dreamlike as his meaty parts float down a drain into a red light.

In arguably the most disturbing and terrifying scene of the film, Laura happens upon a man on a beach.  She asks him questions about whether he's alone or not.  It's clear that what these aliens are there doing is something they wish to remain under the radar. Laura’s alien handler, a man that rides a motorcycle, deals with any possible cleanup, eliminating any evidence that they were even there.  The man on the beach notices in the distance a woman swimming out to get her drowning dog that is stuck in the rough tides.  The woman gets caught in the undercurrent as presumably her husband runs in and tries to swim out to her.  The man talking to Laura runs along the beach and jumps in to save them.  He pulls the man out of the water as his wife and their dog drown.  While this is all going on there is an 18-month-old baby sitting on a blanket on the beach crying its little eyes out.  The husband runs back into the water and drowns as Laura picks up a rock and whacks it over the head of the man she just met down the beach.  She strenuously drags the unconscious man to her van as the baby cries out, likely wondering where his mother is.  Laura is completely indifferent toward the wellbeing of the baby.  The baby is not her target so to her, it's meaningless. 

Laura lures a number of more men, who have almost unintelligible Scottish accents, making them just as alien to us viewers as they are to her, into her web of sorts but as she does this, little pieces of empathy creep their way into her consciousness.  While out on the hunt, she receives a rose from a man whose hand is bleeding, a token of human generosity.  Blood from his hand is on the rose packaging and gets on Laura's hand.  Here she adds another piece of the human puzzle while on her journey of discovering what it is to be human and how fragile that can be.  Later Laura is standing in a dark room while her motorcyclist handler thoroughly and eerily examines her, staring deeply into her eyes, the gateway to the soul.  He does this likely to see if she is operating correctly, making sure she isn’t falling prey to human emotion like the previous version of her.  

While walking down the sidewalk she slips and falls on her face. Strangers are quick to come to her aid and lift her up off the ground. She is taken a little back by their act of compassion and kindness toward her.  Human beings will often help others when they fall, we want to help when a crisis occurs, this act drifts her even closer to human impulse.

While out driving along the streets of Glasgow, Laura picks up a young man with a facial condition called neurofibromatosis.  This is the most staggering scene in the film, it's a fearless look at how we judge people in society based on looks.  This strange scene makes the audience somewhat complicit in the sense that we notice the disfigurement even though Laura doesn't.  She sees him as no different than the other men she's lured into her van.  He, of course, is quite uncomfortable at first because her behavior toward him is unusual.  As he says early on, 'people are ignorant', he also states that he’s never been with a woman and has no friends.  He would firsthand know how horrible people can be to something that's odd or off in some way.  He would see himself as an alien on a planet with a species of beings that don't accept him for who he is solely based on how he looks.

Laura brings him back to the farming chamber for harvest processing, here the man is less hypnotized than the previous men, and his gaze isn’t solely on her.  They are both naked as the man is swallowed by the black plasma.  Laura dresses and walks out the door and then abruptly stops herself in front of a mirror.  Here she stares into her eyes and is likely analyzing these newfound emotions she is feeling.  It’s likely one emotion in particular troubling her is guilt.  She looks away from the mirror and toward a fly trapped between two panes of glass banging around senselessly. Empathy becomes layered on the guilt that's already there and she begins to feel pity for the deformed man.  As a result, she releases the man, still naked into the bushes. 

Her motorcyclist handler somehow knows what Laura is up to.  They must give off some sort of sound frequency that the handler is able to tune himself into.  This ability allows him to feel the progress of her mission as she executes it.  He sets out to track her down but not before he captures the disfigured man and throws him in the trunk of a car.

Laura as a result of this newfound growth has changed.  She climbs in her van and drives off but this time without wearing her fur coat, a symbolic garb that represented the hunter.  This is the first point in the film where Laura feels afraid and unsure about what to do now that the mission is over.  Laura drives for a bit but then stops in the thick fog and abandons her van, then walks in the fog aimlessly looking around.  Her crisis is in full swing here, she’s alone and without a purpose.  She walks into a small town and goes to a diner where she attempts to eat a chocolate cake only to spit it up on the table because she is not human.  She soon meets a man on a bus who is concerned for her as she listens but likely doesn’t understand the bus driver, under the camouflage of a thick Scottish accent, expressing his concern about her not having a jacket in this cold weather.  This courteous man on the bus takes pity on her and offers her to come back to his place for shelter for the night. 

While at this man’s house she continues to open her mind to new human possibilities.  She taps her fingers to music and watches a comedy show on TV as she fails at understanding happiness and joy.  Later up in her room she studies her naked body in the mirror, the curviness of her shape, the form of her breasts, and the muscle on her back.  She rubs her skin together between each foot, she gazes at how light forms around her body, and here she embraces her physical beauty.

Laura’s handler teams up with a number of other handlers, presumably for other female aliens luring hapless men into their chambers, and they all ride off on motorcycles to track Laura and bring her in.

Laura continues her road to discovery by trying to be human as she and the man that’s helped her take a hike and go to an old castle.  Later that night she attempts to make love to this man, opening herself up to the possibility of human love.  It becomes obvious that she really has no idea what she’s doing or what she’s capable of.  This is made painfully clear when the man attempts to insert himself inside her only to discover that there is no place to insert himself.  Laura rushes to the edge of the bed and points a lamp down toward her crotch only to discover that she has no vagina.

Laura flees the house in disbelief, realizing that she can’t be a human being and can’t be with a human being.  She enters a wooded area where she meets up with a logger who warns her to watch her step.  He asks her if she’s alone and what is she doing up there in the woods.  Laura, horrified, walks off and falls asleep in a hiker’s retreat only to be woken up by the logger’s hand massaging her crotch.  Laura runs off into the woods as the logger runs after her.  He catches up to her and attempts to rape her.  Here we see again mankind’s superficial view of beauty.  The seductive music that played while Laura lured her male victims into the farming chamber begins to play over the musical score, but this time it’s for the logger for he is the hunter and Laura is the prey.

Laura is able to escape the hold of the logger but not before he grabs at her back, tearing her flesh away, revealing a black silky alien under the skin.  Once he sees her true beauty under the skin of the superficial human skin, he is appalled.  The logger runs off as a discombobulated Laura begins to remove her skin revealing her true alien form.  She holds her human head on her lap as her avatar looks up at her, terrified.  The logger returns and pours gasoline on her then lighting her on fire.  Here the film conveys how we often in society only view beauty as a physical thing that can only exist on the outside of a person, and neglect the true beauty that exists on the inside, such as the plight of the deformed man.  The tragedy of the film is when most of us, not all, discover what a person is under their skin we are turned off somehow and just want to retreat.  There is a fear of depth when we get to know someone because the more we get to know them, the more we get to know ourselves and that’s the real fear here.  Because most people are unsure of who they are and cling to the norm for security, an exploration into the depth of another person can be a terrifying proposition.

   

  

Resulting from this man’s unbridled ignorance, his fear of himself and his misguided understanding of true beauty, the alien, as a consequence, runs out of the woods and falls and burns to death in a clearing as thick snow languidly falls from the sky.  The handler continues his search for her but can no longer detect her because of her emotional transformation, as the film ends with the alien corpse burning and the snow falling down.

Under the Skin is an extraordinary achievement and impeccably executed, its out-of-body strange tone was creepy and equally beautiful, its sound quality was immaculate in scope.  The narrative of the film was simple but simultaneously complex, luring the audience into its own web just as Laura lured her victims into the liquid chamber.  The film embraces otherworldliness; it remains open to interpretation as it should.  It truly is an alien both literally and metaphorically, it’s challenging in the best possible way a film should be without providing obvious answers to the questions that the film is exploring, which is similar to its Kubrickian influence of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the work of David Lynch, especially with Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet, and certainly the judgmental fear found in The Elephant Man.  There is also an exploration of the Lovecraftian fear of the unknown and in some cases the forbidden.  Laura is the one that knows and then soon becomes the one that doesn’t know and as a consequence is killed by someone who is equally fearful of the unknown.

The film also explores the consequences of awakening in the form of Nietzsche’s Eternal Return.  The film starts with this scared Laura figure on the floor of a white chamber while the Laura of our story undresses her.  But yet at the end of the film when the alien is holding her avatar’s head in her lap, that Laura has the same sadness consuming her face.  The penalty here is; because she feels she becomes obsolete, then a new alien is uploaded with a human form only to go out into the world and inevitably have the same thing happen to them.  The tragedy here is enlightenment by default embraces openness and like the peaceful monks of Tibet, this can be a weakness in an often cold world, where so many have not only lost their way, they never had it in the first place.  The complexity of human emotion became a process that Laura was unable to understand.  She experienced love and compassion but also hatred and evil, this polarizing dichotomy became overwhelming for her.

Under The Skin is about loneliness, it's about solitude, it's about abandonment, but most importantly, in spite of its grim reality, it's about connectivity and compassion, it's about the desire to live life and share it as well, it's also about the cost of exposure in a world that is often filled with individuals that only wish is to exploit that exposure, that vulnerability.