Previously best known for envelope-pushing, OTT, in-your-face gay (or rather "queer") material, Araki puts a couple of toes into the mainstream with his adaptation of Scott Heim's novel Mysterious Skin. That title is indeed somewhat "mysterious", as many viewers will be wondering about its relevance to what they've been watching as the end-credits start to roll.

But otherwise this is a very straightforward parallel-narrative story: perhaps a bit too straightforward, in fact, as the final act "revelation" will come as a surprise to only the most inattentive and dense of audiences. Presumably this is a fault in Heim's book - but even so, Araki might have been expected, on all previous known form, to come up with something a little more spicy and/or shocking.

As it is, the slenderness of the narrative transfers the main burden to the picture's two stars, Brady Corbet (a long way from Thunderbirds) as blond, slightly geeky, socially awkward teenager Bryan (or is it Brian??); and Joseph Gordon Levitt (a long way from Third Rock From the Sun) as hyper-confident, swaggering, rail-thin gay hustler Neil. Bryan and Neil both played "Little League" baseball as kids in their Ohio home-town - the sexually precocious Neil enjoying an intimate relationship with the team's macho-man Coach (Bill Sage).

Years later, Neil retains crystal-clear memories of what went on. But Bryan is much more confused: he knows that something extremely traumatic happened to him, and that it somehow involved Neil. He comes to believe that the pair were victims of alien abduction, but by the time he finds out Neil's identity and address, Neil has decamped to New York...

On reflection, Corbet and Levitt aren't that far from Thunderbirds and Third Rock - Mysterious Skin does have that alien-abuction subplot, which in fact supplies the most likely explanation for the film's enigmatic title: those who have been "taken" are apparently left with tiny scars, the result of the extraterrestrials' experimentation. A secondary explanation arrives when one of Neil's Manhattan "johns" turns out to have severe mole-like lesions all over his back, though as this is so clearly the result of AIDS infection the skin isn't especially "mysterious".

While the Bryan story is relatively straightforward, Neil's johns provide the film with much-needed changes of tone and pace: one of them turns out to be an extremely violent sadist in a near-unwatchable sequence culminating in a suitably harrowing anal rape. This scene is by far the most hard-hitting and effective in the whole picture, jolting us out of the dreamy atmosphere which Araki has previously established (largely via the ethereal music provided by Harold Budd and former Cocteau Twin, Robin Guthrie).

The force of this section makes the rest of Mysterious Skin seem a touch pallid - it's as if Araki, toning down his usual transgressive excess, has gone a stage or two too far in the opposite direction, resulting in a moderately engaging but ever-so-slightly bland affair. This is especially noticeable in the final act, when Neil and Bryan finally meet up: there's nothing like the impact that this bringing together of the picture's two narrative streams should possess (see Desperately Seeking Susan for how this trick should be done.)

What we end up with is an intriguing but ultimately rather half-baked cross between My Own Private Idaho and last year's similarly so-so A Home at the End of the World (also a novel-adaptation, as it happens). What Colin Farrell was to Home, Levitt is to Skin - and while Levitt doesn't quite live up to some of the more excitable critical responses to his performance, he avoids the actorly excesses to which Farrell succumbed and turns in a magnetically watchable turn that gives the picture a lift whenever he's on screen.

Araki, meanwhile, deserves credit for his impeccable tactful handling of his young performers during the very difficult scenes of child sexual abuse during the picture's prologue: camerawork, sound and editing are skilfully choreographed to ensure that the juveniles aren't at any point exposed to exploitative or inappropriate dialogue or situations. We are also made forcibly aware of how this abuse has damaged the characters of both boys, this damage manifesting itself in polar-opposite ways as the pair emerge into post-adolescence and early adulthood. 

The trouble is, we only really get half a story: the film ends just as Neil and Bryan are really getting to know each other, and Heim's novel should perhaps have been used as a launch-pad for an exploration of their friendship. As it is, this journey into (psychological) space terminates with exciting new planets visible, but tantalisingly out of reach. 

Neil Young
Bremen, Germany : 22nd June, 2005

MYSTERIOUS SKIN : [6/10] : USA 2004 : Gregg ARAKI : 99 mins
seen at Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), 14th June 2005 - public show