Under the Skin

Year 12, Day 311 - 11/6/20 - Movie #3,691

BEFORE: As you're no doubt aware, it's now three days after the U.S. Election Day, and there's still no clear winner in the Presidential race.  Biden's a whole lot closer based on electoral votes - it's complicated, but nobody really votes for the President directly, instead Americans vote for local electors, who then have to go to college to cast votes for who the people of their state want.  There's no 100% rule that the electors have to vote for the person they say they're going to vote for, but they almost always do.  It's an antiquated system meant to even out the rights of the big states with the rights of the little states, to do that they made every one of the states essentially winner-take-all, thus in a close race virtually guaranteeing that almost half of the people's votes are useless.  OK, maybe not half, but anyone who's liberal in a conservative state or conservative in a liberal need not bother voting at all, so really, that saves a lot of people a bunch of time, if you think about it.  (And they wonder why so many Americans don't vote.  Duh!)

I'm sort of half-kidding, but when you realize that the Electoral College is based on the honor system, and then that there simply is no more honor anywhere else in American politics, it might be time to scrap it. I don't really favor a nation-wide popular vote, because I suppose even that way up to 49% of voters would still feel like their vote was wasted - I mean, they tell us that every vote counts, and nobody's vote is wasted because they made their voice heard, but really, if you voted for the losing candidate, wouldn't you have rather just slept in that day?  Not wasted two hours in line?  For a few years there I felt that if I was voting liberal in a liberal state like New York then my vote didn't really count, because the liberal candidate was going to win my state, so wouldn't I rather just sleep in that day?  But this election was WAY too important, I wasn't going to take any chances, so we went and voted early in person, on the first day that the polls were open in our state.  

As I said, Biden's closer to victory, some news outlets say he needs just 6 more electoral votes (Nevada would do it) while other news outlets say he needs 17 more (Nevada and Arizona would do that).  Meanwhile, as they keep inching closer to counting all the mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, if he gets that state's 20 electoral votes, then he wins.  Boom, it's over.  Barring the results of any recounts in close states, or lawsuits filed by Trump that could change any results, it seems like Biden's got a few ways to win this thing, and Trump only has two - win every state that hasn't finished counting yet, or flip a couple with lawsuits.  So far all the state judges have laughed in his lawyers' faces (I bet maybe a couple of them have lost family members to the COVID-19 virus, right?) so the lawsuit thing doesn't seem like a valid plan.  Sure, he packed the Supreme Court with three justices that owe him their jobs, but his lawsuits would have to progress up past the state level to get to the federal level, where he could expect a quid pro quo, and that's probably not going to happen.

Look, I'm old enough to remember the voting debacle in Florida in 2000, with the butterfly ballots and the hanging chads and the fact that every time they counted ballots in some counties, they got a different number.  Plus the governor of the state was Jeb Bush (the Republican candidate's BROTHER), and he appointed the woman in charge of counting ballots, so probably the fix was in.  Finally the Supreme Court had to stop all the recounting and they declared George W. Bush the winner, and if we'd had President Gore back then, maybe we'd be in a different place regarding climate change, who can say?  

Having six states right now that haven't finished counting is a bit unnerving, a bit like having SIX FLORIDAS, so it has the potential to be six times worse than the nightmare of 2000.  Let's hope it doesn't come down to that, or take that long - in mid-December 2000, we still didn't know who the next President was going to be!  This time it looks like Biden, unless something goes horribly wrong right now, and I've just jinxed it, haven't I?  Maybe in another day or two we can get some clarity, but even then, Trump's just not going to go down easy, he's going to claim victory, that there was rampant election fraud, or Ukrainian hacking, or wonder why so many of the mail-in ballots that got counted late (but most of those were mailed early) were for Biden.  Gee, I don't know, maybe because more Democrats chose to mail in or drop off their absentee ballots because of the pandemic, or the expected voter intimidation at the polls, or just because they couldn't wait until Election Day to vote out the President they despised?  Meanwhile, Republicans listened to their glorious leader who told them that absentee ballots were for losers, and that it was totally safe to go to the polls because the pandemic was over (it wasn't)?  

Just imagine, if Trump had taken the pandemic just a BIT more seriously, didn't infect more people by holding rallies, and the death toll had been reduced from over 200,000 to something more like 30,000?  There might have been over 100,000 more Trump supporters alive to cast votes on Election Day, and if they had lived in key states, that might have made a difference for him.  But, sadly, we'll never know, now, will we?  That karma, she's a bitch. 

Scarlett Johansson carries over from "Jojo Rabbit". 

THE PLOT: A mysterious young woman seduces lonely men in the evening hours in Scotland.  However, events lead her to begin a process of self-discovery. 

AFTER: Well, this film puts me in a rather awkward position.  As one might be able to draw from the title of this film, the main goal of this production seemed to be to showcase Scarlett Johansson in the buff.  You know, starkers, nekkid, in the all-together.  Which is fine, if that's your thing, I feel like on some level this is something I should support, or at least would have supported in the past.  But a lot has changed in Hollywood these past few years, and my understanding was that, at least on some level, we were all supposed to be better than that by now, to have higher aspirations.  

Now I can't help but view this as exploitative somehow, even assuming (and I do) that Ms. Johansson was well aware of the nature of the project when she signed on, that nudity was involved.  And maybe she was fine with that, proud of her body's condition and form or interested in preserving it forever on celluloid (OK, digital now) before things started going south, or whatever.  Maybe she was between relationships at the time, and this served as a de facto type of dating incentive, and hey, now she's married (third time, I think) to Colin Jost, and things seem to be going well, so who's to say the plan didn't work?  

But the question remains, is there enough story here to justify the repeated on-screen nudity?  Here's the story - a (possibly alien?) woman seduces men while driving around in her van, she takes them home, or goes home with them, things start getting hot and heavy, nudity is involved, and then the man ends up in some kind of psychic hellscape instead, where he's covered in black liquid goo and (presumably) ultimately devoured.  Repeat, as necessary, until the end of the film.  Not much else is really explained - what, exactly is she?  Alien, or demon, or psychic vampire, or some combination thereof?  

There are other characters - one or more men on motorcycles who seem to act as her "handlers" of sorts, disposing of remains as necessary, or perhaps just generally keeping track of her activities, but since the dialogue is minimal throughout the film, it's often hard to determine what, exactly, is taking place.  That was my experience, anyway.  Not that a film has to telegraph everything, because it generally doesn't, but damn it, you've got to give me something I can hang my hat on, at least once in a while.  

And to be fair, something different does happen near the end - one possible interpretation is that "The Female" gradually grows tired of this cycle of violence, or perhaps starts to develop an emotional response after so many interactions with lonely men/victims.  One man is disabled, and it seems that she had some kind of change of heart, as he is later seen escaping, naked, from her physical or psychic prison.  But it seems that the mysterious motorcyclist is on hand to make sure that he doesn't get very far, because that would potentially ruin whatever situation it is that they're running.  (Are they harvesting men for food? Energy? Some kind of alien zoo?  It's all very unclear.)  

The Female seems to drive off on her own at some point, abandoning her van and heading off into the woods.  Perhaps it's karma that she then becomes a potential victim for an aggressive sexual predator in the woods - and this gives her a fresh perspective perhaps on her recent activities, but it also ends up sealing her fate.  Well, at least something happens after an hour and a half of nearly nothing happening. Technically this constitutes a narrative arc, but only just barely. 

I praised Ms. Johansson's acting ability a couple days ago after watching "Jojo Rabbit", but this film from 2013 represents more of the before-times, namely before the "Avengers" movies, when she would get hired to play the cold, emotionless female roles as seen in "Lost in Translation", "Ghost World" and "Girl With a Pearl Earring" - the dissassociated characters like "girl in painting" or "awkward teen".  Which makes you wonder if they cast "Under the Skin" by saying, "Hmm, who can we get that can interact with lonely men and display absolutely no emotion whatsoever... call Scarlett Johansson!"

Also starring Jeremy McWilliams, Adam Pearson, Lynsey Taylor Mackay, Krystof Hadek, Paul Brannigan, Michael Moreland, Dave Acton

RATING: 3 out of 10 male naughty bits