By – Gareth Jones

For fans of American Gothic, David Lynch, Viggo Mortenson, terrifying coming of age films

Some films you see and they are immediately forgotten.  Others stick in the back of your mind forever.  For me, The Reflecting Skin is one of the latter. Released in 1990, it was the first film directed by the incredibly talented polymath, Phillip Ridley.  He had made two short films and written the screenplay for The Krays, all while a student.  He has also published multiple books for adults and children, written and performed music, written plays, done performance art, and so much more.  He has gone on to direct two other feature films, but for me The Reflecting Skin is his masterpiece.

In the tradition of Night of the Hunter, Ridley has created a prime example of American Gothic.  In fact, he and his cinematographer (the incomparable Dick Pope) based so much of the visual language on the work of Andrew Wyeth (in particular the painting “Christina’s World” and Grant Wood, whose most famous painting is “American Gothic” which also was the original title for the film.  Few films have translated so beautifully and succinctly from paintings, but here Ridley and Pope have captured the essence of these influential paintings and provided movement and story to these images.  It possesses all the harkings of a true gothic film, what I call the six Cs of Gothic (castles, curtains, candelabras, crisis, corpses, and crosses) but filtered through the stunning ideas and imagery created by Pope and Ridley.

Again, like Night of the Hunter, the story is from the view of children in the 1950’s. Ridley moves the location to Idaho, but still shows how children are failed by adults and have to try and make sense of the horror of the world.  It follows the journey of young Seth Dove (played by first time actor Jeremy Cooper) who at eight years old has to process so much horror. His mother is abusive, verbally and physically, while her closeted husband buries his head in the world of comics to avoid his reality.  When children begin to die, Seth convinces himself that his widow neighbor Dolphin Blue is a vampire.  She is played majestically by the English actor Lindsey Duncan who has had a stunning career on film and on stage. Here, she brings a delicate balance between empathy and madness to the character. The sheriff accuses Seth’s father of the crime, which leads to a horrifying moment of self immolation. This prompts the return of the prodigal son who has been in the Army in Japan, suffering from radiation exposure. He is played by the one and only Viggo Mortenson, here showing the reason he has been such a leading actor for the past 30 years.  His strength, his anger, and his physicality is on full display.  His character, Cameron Dove, falls in love with the widow Blue, which drives Seth even deeper into anger and wrath.

Between the cinematography, the story, the acting, and the direction, it is a stunning first film, fully realized and executed.  It captures the dark fairy tale nature of children trying to process the world around them.  Sadly, the film shows how for some children, they continue the pain and suffering onto animals and possibly fellow humans.  That may be the scariest part of the film, how children become seduced by violence.

For many years, unless you had a VHS copy, it was a major challenge, if not impossible, to find a way to watch the film.  We are fortunate that Film Movement recently released a beautiful blu-ray and now it is streaming on several free streaming sites.  This should hopefully lead to a revival of the film, moving it from cult status to being seen as a major work of Gothic art