Under The Skin 15

Visually and aurally audacious and as slippery in form as its central character, Jonathan Glazer’s elliptical sci-fi about an alien creature (Johansson) who stalks down human prey is a brilliant amalgam of fantasy and reality. The cycle mutates when a routine pick-up unexpectedly kindles an empathetic response, infecting her with humanness and illuminating the fate of the one who came before. Filmed on location in Scotland, the filmmaking recalls the realism of Ken Loach as much as the surrealism of David Lynch. Glazer has created an entirely distinctive film, both creepy and luminous in its metaphysical precision.

We are also screening our very own BFI Film Academy made film titled Loose Threads ahead of the film. This was made as part of the BFI Film Academy 2020-2021 course at the Showroom Cinema.

This film is screening as part of the Young Programmers Festival. For more information about the rest of the programme please click here. The Young Programmers Festival was planned and put together by 36 talented 16-19 year olds from this year’s BFI Specialist Programming Course, which runs here at Showroom Cinema each year.

Statement from the Young Programmers:

The aim of our film season is to champion non male identifying composers, as previously mentioned these composers are significantly overlooked and undervalued and deserve to be celebrated on the big screen. "The Shining" is a magnificent example of crafted suspense which is aided by its other worldly score composed by Wendy Carlos.

Similar to this, the score of Under the Skin, expertly crafted by Mica Levi, feels as if it was produced in the black void featured in the movie, giving the audience a constant feeling of dread and unease with its use of distorted instruments and harmonics.