Sundance London 2023: Mysterious Skin

Originally published 08/07/23 on Letterboxd

“As we sat there listening to the carolers, I wanted to tell Brian that it was over now and that everything would be okay. But that was a lie, plus I couldn't speak anyway. I wish there was some way to go back and undo the past. But there wasn't. There was nothing we could do. So I just stayed silent and tried to telepathically communicate how sorry I was about what had happened. And I thought of all the grief and sadness and fucked-up suffering in the world, and it made me want to escape. I wished with all my heart we could just leave this world behind. Rise like two angels in the night and magically… disappear”.

Hadn’t seen this in 3 years and seeing it again made me remember why. Even amongst the oeuvre of an artist as empathetic to the maligned and excommunicated as Araki’s, this is a work of immense, overwhelming sensitivity, deftly balancing unspeakable horror with the incommunicable grief that follows. This is one of the hardest pieces of art to experience not just because of how deeply discomforting its subjectivity is, but because it is a coming-of-age film that seems to confirm that everything you feared you would grow into is indeed true and inescapable. Wish there was more I could say about something I love as much as this, but I think the fact that I spent the night after seeing this sobbing to Golden Hair speaks for itself.

What the film asserts is that sometimes there really is no answer to what your suffering is really for- no assurances or whispers of sweet nothings, telling you that there’s a reason that you had to go through things no one should ever have to go through or that you were born queer for a reason or that to be born queer is to feel a kind of pain that there is no reason for anyone to feel except needless cruelty. Sometimes the only answer is to say nothing and hold on to those closest to you, even those you despise because you hold them responsible for your suffering.