The Reflecting Skin

Plot synopsis:
Eight year-old Seth Dove (Jeremy Cooper) lives in an isolated American prairie community in the 1950s. The film opens with Seth and his friends Eben and Kim, playing with a frog Seth has found in the fields. The boys inflate the frog by inserting a reed up its anus and leave it by the side of the road. When a local English widow, Dolphin Blue (Lindsay Duncan) stops to inspect it, Seth shoots the inflated frog with a slingshot, causing it to explode over Dolphin.
Seth retreats back to the small gas station where he lives with his harridan mother Ruth (Sheila Moore) and shy father Luke (Duncan Fraser). Seth’s older brother, Cameron (Viggo Mortensen), is away on military service in the Pacific (Ruth refers to them as "the pretty islands"). Seth serves gas to a mysterious group of young men driving a black Cadillac, who promise to see him again soon and drive off.
Seth is sent to Dolphin’s house to apologise for the frog prank. Dolphin is haunted by the memory of her dead husband, who hung himself for unknown reasons a week after their wedding. Surrounded by artifacts from her husband’s family’s whaling past, Seth takes some of her self-pitying remarks (she claims to be "two hundred years old") literally, and after learning about vampires from his father, who is reading a novel on that theme, Seth surmises that Dolphin must be a vampire.
After Eben goes missing, Seth and Kim go to Dolphin’s house to investigate, because Seth believes she is responsible for Eben's disappearance. The boys excitedly demolish Dolphin’s bedroom belongings, and run from the house screaming after spying on her masturbating. Seth runs home, and later finds Eben’s dead body floating in the water cistern. The local authorities believe Luke is responsible, because of a homosexual indiscretion years previously; believing himself to be doomed, Luke douses himself with petrol and incinerates himself.
Cameron returns home to look after Seth, as Ruth has become shell-shocked following Luke’s death. Whilst visiting his grave, Cameron meets Dolphin, and romance sparks between the two, much to Seth’s horror. In a nearby barn, Seth and Kim discover an ossified dead fetus, which Seth believes to be Eben incarnate as a fallen angel and takes home with him. The next day, Seth follows Cameron to Dolphin’s house, where he observes Cameron emotionally confessing to Dolphin his culpability in atomic bomb experiments. Cameron and Dolphin begin to make love; running in terror from the house, Seth witnesses the men in the Cadillac abducting Kim.
Cameron’s body begins to deteriorate from radiation sickness, which Seth attributes to Dolphin's supposed vampirism. Kim’s body is discovered the next day, and law enforcement authorities still believe that Luke is alive and responsible. As Cameron and Dolphin grow closer and plot to run away together, Seth focuses his rage at Dolphin, and after consulting with the fetus "angel", orchestrates Dolphin being led away by the men in the black Cadillac. The next morning, Dolphin’s body is found, and Cameron breaks down into tears. Realising the reality of what he has done, Seth runs to a nearby field and, overwhelmed with guilt and grief, screams at the setting sun.

Tags: cult, psychedelic, murder

Review:
We flit around wrapped in our flag thinking we're innocent, all the while nuking children in war only to focus on how their radiated skin looks like a mirror in which we can see our lovely reflections.
The protagonist-Seth-is confronted by the horrors of mortality when he meets the mysterious "vampire", Dolphin Blue, a lonely widow he encounters when he and his friends explode a frog in front of her.
The film follows Seth through his deepening understanding of the fragility of existence.A highly evocative and stylised tale of small town life and death set amidst swaying corn fields and clear blue skies, but, there is a foetus in the barn and death drives a black car through town...
British author and writer Philip Ridley has done very little in the field of cinema, but what there is, is more than interesting and great, especially in the case of this debut of his, Reflecting Skin (1990).
The film stars Jeremy Cooper as a some 10 year old boy named Seth Dove, who lives in the rural areas of America in the 1950's, when the WWII is still very freshly in minds.
Also, a weird lady lives near Seth's house and the lady - despite being very attractive - is also very bizarre and threatening, and almost like a vampire in a fairy tales, which Seth's father happens to read all the time.
This is nearly as disturbing as possible, and has characters and settings which would make (and hopefully have made or will make) David Lynch give a huge hug to Philip.Reflecting Skin is the kind of film a director manages to do perhaps just once during his career.
Due to the much stronger and disturbing emotional content and elements of Reflecting Skin, the visual beauty naturally gives a huge contrast to the experience, and also a goal which should be reached by the film's characters, unless it wasn't already too late for them.Music is very important element in Cinema, and Reflecting Skin shines on that level, too.
The final image and last 2 minutes of Reflecting Skin would be extremely intense without the music, but now they are perfectly harrowing and powerful, thanks to the talent and gift of Nick Bicât.These ultra powerful and harrowing films usually have at least one element in common: the final scene, sequence or image, which usually takes the viewer as far as possible and truly tests the tolerance, without never being gratuitous or exploitative.
Reflecting Skin's ending is heart breakingly harrowing, mostly because of the fact that Seth has never given clues of something like this during the film, and thus it comes pretty unexpectedly, but still very understandably, as it all tightens the film's message and theme for the last time.
It is very sad and weird that Ridley hasn't done anything in the field of cinema for many years (as far as I know, Darkly Noon is so far the last film he has done), because it would be so great if there was some future projects and cinema plans for the director.
I really hope Ridley would continue making films one day, because world needs his kind of film makers.I can't say anything which would give Reflecting Skin less than 10/10 because it lacks all the things - mostly little too shallow characters - which make The Krays and Darkly Noon a little less effective and striking works.
The Reflecting Skin is, by far, the best film I have ever seen.The film is about a young 8-year-old boy named Seth Dove, who leads a fairly normal childhood in the prairie farmlands of the 1950's.When a friend is murdered and his father, who has a secret past, is accused of the crime Seth's world is suddenly turned upside down.
However, Seth becomes fixated with a reclusive widow named Dolphin Blue and, convinced she is a vampire, believes she is responsible for the death of his friends.
He also believes she is out to kill his older brother Cameron and will stop at nothing to save him.This film deals with dark psychological territory that some viewers may find disturbing.
However, I do recommend you watch this film as Philip Ridley has directed a film that shows how a child's imagination can be extremely overactive but also, it shows just how cruel the adult world can be.The film is also shot in a very beautiful way.
This is a film that tosses in bits and pieces of imagery and motifs that might have come from American/Southern gothic sources like Sam Shepard, Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, David Lynch, Anne Rice and Tobe Hooper (and others) -- but it fails to make its world seem the least bit vital or interesting.
All we are left with are pseudo-disturbing characters and bits of imagery that don't want to fit together: the cliched townie puritans and religious fanatics, a dead baby, an English neighbor nearby who may or may not be a vampire, an hysterical mother with a husband who is a repressed homosexual, and most strangely there is a group of greaser murderer/pedophiles who drive around almost completely unnoticed in a shiny black Plymouth.
This narrative is all led by a 9 year old protagonist boy named Seth Dove (and his stock set of small town friends) and his older brother Cam (played by Viggo Mortensen) who just returned from fighting the Japanese.Not much really happens in this film except that there is a lot of yelling and menacing looks.
But as it goes on you begin to realize that this over-emphasis on visual beauty is a kind of device to distract the audience from possibly realizing that there is nothing interesting going on.Disparate stock characters and cliches from American gothic horror and southern gothic sources could be interesting if it all these elements were supported by a unique screenplay and guided by a gifted director (go rent Jim Jarmusch's DEAD MAN, which is not a great film, but a much better one that takes a similar approach to its material).
When you watch it you'll know what I mean.Young Seth lives in rural America at the end of WWII.
"The Reflecting Skin" is among the most beautiful and elegiac movies I have ever seen.It's dark and depressing film which takes place during 50's.Philip Ridley's full-length debut features many memorable moments for example frog exploding in a torrent of blood and guts,a couple of chirping ladies walking close to Seth and carrying a dead seagull,a gruesome suicide that ended with a burning gas station and the discovery of the mummified baby in the barn.The water plays the major theme in "The Reflecting Skin".The film is extremely poetic with its bleak subject matter of loneliness and mourn.The cinematography of Dick Pope is breathtaking with some moody shots of the fields,rolling hills and big skies.Dreamy and strangely hypnotic "The Reflecting Skin" is an unforgettable trip into sadness and melancholy.9 out of 10..
I guess the one consolation is that I watched it on Encore Avenue and didn't waste any money renting it.I would like to leave the review at that, but I must write at least ten lines, so here goes.It is a good thing for Viggo Mortensen that he has done some fantastic work since then, or he might have gone the way of Philip Michael Thomas.I generally don't watch movies that show fewer than three stars in the description on my digital guide; this one had no stars, but I simply thought that an oversight.
Dark and semi-psychotic scenes of Seth's father's self-immolation are entwined with the gentle lyricism of Cameron's "falling in love" with the "vampire woman," Dolphin Blue.
The actor who plays a 9-year old Seth is absolutely excellent in portraying a frightened, well-meaning rural boy who has already absorbed all the unspeakable cruelty of his family and wider local milieu.
In 1990 British author and screenwriter Philip Ridley gave us one of the best (in my opinion among with "The Spirit of the Beehive" and "Let the Right One In"), deeply sensational and very frightening portrait of childhood full of cruel youths, abused children (Ridley avoids to shock the audience, it's preferable to horrify it as the black car appears through sun illusions - special kudos to the magnificent cinematography by Dick Pope), desperate people (the father, the English lady etc.) in their widely shut worlds of loneliness and fear from their own "crimes" of the past who decide to drink gasoline and light the fire (!) or they've been transformed into vampires through 10 years old Seth's eyes.
This movie confused me a little and depressed me in a weird way.I heard the music in the beginning and i thought it was a perfect prelude for a meaning-full movie.Then there was the scenery,the view, i thought it was majestic.And then something happened, a weird contradiction but a very realistic one too.The life and behavior of the adults at that place changed the scenery into something depressing and dull.The children had to endure the problematic lives and the cruel manners of the adults and the only way out was action and exaggerating fantasy.The children, always waiting for something new something that could set them free.Locked in a social network founded on violence,problematic adults and war.Waiting and waiting surrounded by problems and death.
The Reflecting Skin is a bizarre and equally disturbing movie-experience combining beautiful cinematography with a really weird and screwed-up story that's viewed from an abused child's peculiar slant on things.Though not meant for all tastes, The Reflecting Skin is one of those films that's just too odd to be outrightly dismissed.If you enjoy films that are offbeat, surreal and nightmarish in nature, then here's one whose story and imagery creates a very dark and haunting atmosphere set against the dazzling brightness of rural Idaho in the 1950s.The innocence of a 9 year-old boy named Seth is stripped away as he closely observes the strange and macabre characters that are around him.Life for this troubled, young boy living on the outskirts of a small, isolated farm-town is magnified beyond reality into a weird, quasi-fantasy that directly challenges the viewer's idealized notions about the naivety of childhood and the rationality of a child's thinking.A lot of people will find at this film's conclusion that just too many questions were deliberately left unanswered.
Unknown Little Gem. In the 50's, the eight year-old Seth Dove (Jeremy Cooper) uses to play prank with his friends Kim (Evan Hall) and Eben (Codie Lucas Wilbee) in the rural area of the United States.
Seth lives with his father Luke Dove (Duncan Fraser), who runs a gas station and a junkyard in the middle of nowhere, and with his dysfunctional mother Ruth Dove (Sheila Moore), who misses her son Cameron Dove (Viggo Mortensen) that fought in the Pacific.
British playwright and author Philip Ridley's debut film "The Reflecting Skin" is very bleak and disturbing.
In contrast to that, we find a very dark and sad story about 9-year-old Seth Dove who grows up in the middle of nowhere and has finally to cope with death, physical and mental illness, and loss of innocence, especially his own.
At the end he will be confronted with all this misery at once; he did NOT prevent his friend and the "vampire" widow from being killed; he would have to watch his brother die from atomic contamination without his love being fulfilled, their Dad having committed suicide after being accused of child abuse and their mother falling into  insanity.
(The old man is a fan of pulp novels.) Therefore, Seth becomes alarmed when his older brother Cameron (Viggo Mortensen), a military veteran, falls in love with the widow."The Reflecting Skin" is a striking, unusual film, marking the filmmaking debut for Philip Ridley, a British playwright, author, and screenwriter.
It's haunting and helps to draw you into this story that is sure to get under the skin of some of its viewers.Fans of Mortensen should be aware that he doesn't show up for over 40 minutes, but he provides an engaging presence as a young man with little patience for his kid brother.
Sheila Moore chews the scenery as the shrewish Dove mother, Canadian character actor Fraser is fine as the father with a grim, sordid past, and young Cooper offers a believable performance.Consistently unpredictable, "The Reflecting Skin" does have a fair bit going for it, and it's worth a look for buffs searching for something different and interesting.Seven out of 10..
As one other reviewer wrote "In The Reflecting Skin, nobody behaves like a normal person would, and the viewer is left as a patron at a freak show." The sheriff for example  I felt the desire to kick his ..you know what for the way he spoke to people, including Seth ( the leading character) .It was an entertaining movie nevertheless  especially the first scene with the exploding frog.
There are some disturbing scenes  like a father who commits a suicide in front of his nine years old son  or an English Lady who is acting as weird as it can dreaming of her dead husband.As I mentioned the brilliant cinematography was probably the best asset of this movie.
I watched it at home, but am sure that on a cinema screen the sunset's scenes or the nature one would look absolutely amazing.Reflecting Skin is not the best movie I have seen, but I guess some scenes will be stuck in my mind for a while.
So does Philip Ridley.The Reflecting Skin is a movie like I just described.
After a young boy named Seth Dove (Jeremy Cooper) is caught with his two buddies causing havoc he must go and meet his odd widow neighbour Dolphin Blue (Lindsay Duncan) to apologize.
From Author turned filmmaker "Phillip Ridley" comes his mythical and mysterious film debut "The Reflective Skin" a strange and unsettling look at loneliness and loss of innocence.
Comparisons to David Lynch will always come about if a film is in anyway odd or weird but this is certainly no imitation more in style with Twin Peaks to which this was released before.The story is told through the eyes of a not so innocent 8 year old boy named Seth set in rural America in the 1950's, with world war II still imprinted on the mind of the citizens.
Scenes of Seth and friends blowing up a frog with a straw then making it explode, twin girls walking down a path with a dead seagull in their hands clucking while looking on intently could come straight from a nightmare and the latter scene especially can send shivers down your spine.The dark tone never shifts it stays there and it lingers in the mind until well after the film has finished.
Viggo Mortensen is very good in his role playing a character who is also fairly damaged by his environment after fighting in the pacific islands.Overall The Reflective Skin is worth seeking out, it may not be for everyone but everyone who does enjoy can take something different out of it.
The main character is Seth Dove; a young kid that gets his kicks by exploding frogs and vandalising people's homes.
The film is not helped by the lead character; Seth Dove is not easy to like at all - his actions and mannerisms made me hate the kid.
The older brother character wasn't all that confusing and was easy to see he possibly was going through radiation poisoning due to his involvement in the pacific during his duty and how some of those symptoms could be misinterpreted by the boy as being the victim of vampirism.Yes I understand the entire metaphor of the film, how the car of hooligans represent death, how he didn't feel like he needed a ride just yet.
In The Reflecting Skin--SPOILER ALERT--the central victim is an 8-year-old farm boy, who is traumatized at one time or another by nearly everyone in his life.
Even his beloved older brother, Cameron, who himself is a victim of both his mother's incestuous advances and the US military's atomic testing program in the Pacific, is sometimes physically and emotionally abusive towards him—at one point showing him the photo of a Hiroshima baby with "reflecting skin," from which the film takes its names.
But unlike the usual tearjerker Hollywood movie about child abuse, Seth is no more an "innocent angel" than is his brother or his father or his friends who get murdered.
For anyone who loves to explore the myriad possibilities Ridley has opened up however, The Reflecting Skin is a dark, disturbing, sometimes comic and unfailingly beautiful experience.
The cinematography is never less than stunning, each frame a work of art.Many have found the film to be boring, but let's examine its characters (minor spoilers here, but not really)::A troubled, abused 9 year old boy growing up on a farm with a penchant for "exploding frogs" who possesses overactive, dark imagination and who provides his own, disturbing answers to life's troubling questions.His older brother, physically and mentally affected by the military's nuclear testing on the Bikini Islands from which he's just returned.
Their demented, abusive and utterly miserable mother.Their father, a gentle, sad and tortured soul, destroyed by a long ago indiscretion no one seems capable of forgiving him for, who finds escape only in pulp novels about vampires.Their sad widowed neighbor, a lonely displaced British woman brought to the farmlands by her husband and whom Seth believes is a murderous 200 year old vampire.A gorgeous, black 1950's Cadillac Fleetwood roaming the countryside filled with handsome, murderously mysterious young men.The self-righteous, bizarre sheriff who, simultaneously is more hilarious and scarier than any other character in the story, but who matters little.A neighbor crazed by alcohol, grief and dreams of bestiality.
I suppose the symbolism involves the title, "The Reflecting Skin" which is mentioned late in the film.His brother Cameron (Viggo Mortensen) shows up from watching a-bomb tests and falls in love with the woman whose dead husband's name was Adam.