(Gregg Araki / 2004 / USA / 105 Mins / Cert 18)
(Tues 26th / 8pm / £2)

"The summer I was eight years old, five hours disappeared from my life. Five hours, lost, gone without a trace..." These are the words of Brian Lackey (Brady Corbet), a troubled 18 year-old, growing up in the stiflingly small town of Hutchinson, Kansas. Plagued by nightmares, Brian believes that he may have been the victim of an alien abduction. Local Neil McCormick (Joseph Gordon Levitt - Tommy in Third Rock from the Sun) however, is the ultimate beautiful outsider. With a loving but promiscuous mother (Elisabeth Shue), Neil is wise beyond his years and curious about his developing sexuality, having found what he perceived to be love from his Little League baseball coach (played by Hal Hartley veteran Bill Sage) at a very early age. Now, ten years later, Neil is a teenage hustler, nonchalant about the dangerous path his life is taking. Neil's pursuit of love leads him to New York City, while Brian's voyage of self discovery leads him to Neil - who helps him to unlock the dark secrets of their past. Based on the acclaimed novel by Scott Heim, "Mysterious Skin" explores the hearts and minds of two very different boys who come to find the key to their future happiness lies in the exorcism of their collective demons.

Gregg Araki (The Doom Generation, Nowhere) has carved a reasonably successful career presenting messed up teenage lives with an aesthetic fetish rarely seen outside of a Mapplethorpe photo. It seems that with Mysterious Skin he has displayed a coming of age, that lurking beneath the angsty goth-chic so alienating in his earlier work is a very tender, aching heart.