The Reflecting Skin

1990 ****1/2

The Reflecting Skin is a movie that will live in your memories as a beautiful, dark gem; polished and captivating but so, so dark. It takes place in rural Idaho in the 1950s, and follows young Seth Dove, nearly nine, as some colossal turning points in his life roll over him.

I can go no further without mentioning the stunning beauty repeatedly captured by the camera. I can't tell if the cinematographer's gaze is a loving gaze or if he's just showing off, but these moving Andrew Wyeth paintings are so bewitching I just don't care. The entire movie takes place amidst solitary houses and dusty roads all surrounded by an endless sea of wheat.

On one such dusty road Seth and his friends pull an amusing prank involving an inflated frog and a slingshot, targeting the creepy widow they believe to be a witch, or maybe a vampire.

Seth's mother makes him go to her house to apologize, and then my favorite part of the movie happens. In broad daylight, under a perfect cornflower-blue sky, Seth approaches this unassuming farmhouse like he was walking into Mordor.

The filmmaking right here is just magic; the scenery is off a postcard in the giftshop for the American Heartland, but the mood comes from some dark, murky hallway in the middle of the night. The golden wheat is not describing vastness, it's isolating you, closing you in.

The landscape echoes its inhabitants. Every person in this movie has something inky in their core: a distorted nature, a horrible secret, a heavy kernel of doom. For some people it's right on the surface, like Seth's abusive wreck of a mother, for the rest it only takes a small bit of conversation. When Seth meets the widow, she brushes off the frog bomb, saying it was her dress she was really upset about, and that she used to do the same sort of thing as a kid. "Have you ever tied fireworks to a cat's tail?" she asks. "Ooh, you ought to. They go crazy."

I don't want to say much about the plot, which is sparse but not lacking. I will share a couple of details. Seth and his friend find a baby angel in the loft of the church where they like to hang out. Seth takes it home and hides it under the bed, pulling it out at night to confide in it. Yeah, it's an aborted baby. This plot point has no explanation and no impact on the story, except to provide Seth with a sidekick. And be gross.

Midway through the movie Seth's older brother Cameron comes home from service in the Pacific. He's played by a young and hunkalicious Viggo Mortensen (and he shows his butt! Ladies...).

In the scene above, Seth greets Cam on the road. Cam stops, looks around at the panorama of gold and blue, sighs dejectedly and says "It's so ugly here."

Of course my first thought was how wrong that was, and how his words must be reflecting his complex relationship with his origins. When the movie was over I thought "no, he's absolutely right."

I dinged this a half star off perfect because it's one of those art house movies that can't help be a little too art house at times (no passes for being made in 1990). Also, watching it this time I noticed a handful of scenes that were a bit beyond the acting chops of Jeremy Cooper, the kid playing Seth. But these are small potatoes, I recommend this to all of you.