METAL SKIN

Written and directed by Geoff Wright, the violently individual, profoundly disquieting force behind Romper Stumper, Metal Skin hits like a bruise into the soft belly of mainstream film. Challenging the banal conservatism of tradition, Wright approaches his un-commercial premise with courage, honestly depicting life's dark crust in this story of sleep-walking youth trapped in lives of urban meaningless. His style probes into criminal underworlds that are, in fact, right next door to us (or within the mirror). That he does this while evoking pain and pathos makes him an artist. That he makes such somber reflections thrill-rides of grinding metal, searing skin, and suspense explains his cult popularity.

Living is a stupefying half-existence in Wright's vision, a sleep-walk between bed and work and bed again. The only faith to be found is hidden in sex and supped up cars. In a plot whose layered complexities lend a tangled sense of dementia to a subversive Comedy of Manners, our first lad Joe (Aden Young), a psychologically scarred bloke, gets a job at a grocery store, where he looks for comfort from Roslyn (Nadine Garner), the girlfriend of his co-worker Dazey (Ben Mendelsohn). Joe and Dazey gravitate to one another despite an initial sense of competition, bonded by a love of cars. Dazey, a father-figure of sorts, teaches Joe the thrills of fast driving as they embark on a strange friendship. Savina (Tara Morice), whose mother is a Christian fundamentalist, practices Satanism when not working alongside Dazey and the others. Using spellcraft to seduce Dazey, Savina is oblivious to the fact that Joe thinks she's lusting after him, which further complicates a bizarre tangle of relationships.

Metal Skin captures the murderous spirit of banality, the miserable torture of the commonplace, where no spectral Hades could be as terrible as the numbing reality of the motionless everyday - where minds and bodies go nowhere and just surviving is the rationale for life. Depressingly average outsiders, not knowing what they want, how to ask, or where to look, these kids are too recognizable. They make us uncomfortable because they are us stripped of our fantasies of a mythical 'good life.'

Not a movie to bring a date to if you expect to get 'friendly' afterwards, this purple sore of action and inner struggle is existential in scope. There is little meaning, and less reason for these kids to assume that life should get any better. Thrills, experience, and gratification are the end-all justification for enduring horrible abusive home lives, unrewarding work days, and the company of each other. More interesting is the fact that the filmmakers combine the usual emphasis on surface action with character development. The characters are people with realistically developed histories - histories, like ghosts of guilt and broken dreams, which haunt them more devastatingly than any specters. Broken pasts result in fragmented futures, and we're whisked along for the ride!

Subversive Cinema should be commended for making available such a substantial film. Offering a pristine print of this emotional vivisection in 2.35.1 (anamorphic widescreen), colors are gorgeous, print damage restricted, and extras include a reproduction of the movie's theatrical poster, a trio of lobby card reproductions, an introduction by director Geoffrey Wright, commentary by cast and crew, a documentary, Lover Boy, and Wright's first film, which plays with or without commentary. Trailers for the title feature, The Gardener, and Blue Murder are accompanied by a still gallery. The second disk is especially appropriate, including the score, which emphasizes certain thematic points and evokes images from the feature. Children without memories of childhood and adults whose minds may never mature with their bodies, the dreamless girls and emotionally numb young men in Metal Skin are ghosts before their time, haunted and haunting the impossible roads of their own broken futures. See it, feel it, never be the same.

Review by William P. Simmons