Under my skin

I arranged to meet an old friend from university at the weekend. We are both cineastes so a film accompanied drinks and food.

My expectations for the film were low. Recent product from hoorah for Hollywood had been dispiriting . The independant sector was little better with a tattoo of violence or hard core to hide the emperor's new clothes.

Under the Skin was a labour of love for a chap who shot Radiohead promos and commercials for the black stuff. His previous features were interesting - a gangster film with a lobster tanned Ray Winstone and a film about reincarnation with Nicole Kidman . In the latter the character believes her dead husband is resurrected in a twelve year old boy. The scene were they bathe together is uncomfortable and has to be seen to be disbelieved.

Under the Skin is loosely based on a cult book . The narrative is an alien roaming Caledonia preying on lonely Scotsmen. ET takes the form of Scarlett Johansson. She prowls Glasgow streets in a transit picking up men with the promise of favours. Secret cameras follow the actor as she stops and chats up unsuspecting Glaswegians. She is disguised in a black wig and a fur coat. No-one recognises her .

The fate of the men is horrifying but this is not a horror film. It is an unsettling mixture of social realism and metaphysics and its execution is flawless. It is sui generis, very beautiful and deeply unsettling. Ms Johansson proves herself a courageous performer and a fine actor. The otherworldly is aided by the incongruous images of a celebrity walking Glasgow streets unrecognised. With little dialogue she realises the awful loneliness of living and breathing a finite life.

When I left the theatre I was at first underwhelmed. It seemed like a short film stretched to a feature. But I could not get the mood and the images out of my head. They burrowed to my subconscious and made the day seem utterly alien.