Under the Skin

Well hats off to Scarlett Johansson for agreeing to come filming in a wet and wintry Glasgow for this quite intriguing sci-fi drama. She drives around the city in her van, ostensibly on the prowl for horny young men looking for a quickie. Back at her's, though - and that's not always the same place - they find themselves in all together different sticky situation. There's no violence, or brutality - just a gentle, I suppose drowning, sensation. What is going on? Does she even know? Things begin to change after a trip to the forest that she encounters a gamekeeper who is more used to setting the pace rather than following. His attempt to rape her in the woods seems to act as a catalyst and... Now there is a conundrum here. Is her behaviour changing because of her human interaction, or is it the very nature of that interaction that is feeding her needs? Well that's a question that dogs this quite artistically filmed, large dialogue-free, mystery and maybe there just isn't an answer. It is fun to see a woman doing the predatory work here - her charms equally effective on even the chavviest of Glaswegians, and what I liked about the end is that I still didn't know. It's an odd film, this - enjoyable isn't quite the word, but it is certainly unusual.