Under the Skin (2013) is Jonathan Glazer’s movie about an alien wearing Scarlett Johansson, cruising Glasgow in a van for lonely men who never make it home, and it is about as far from a cuddly movie-star nude role as it gets.
The first time we meet her, she isn’t anybody yet. No name, no past, just a naked figure in a white nowhere, getting dressed for a job she doesn’t understand. What happens in the opening About seven minutes in, Glazer drops us into a blank white space that feels like no place on Earth, and
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This is the scene that explains the title, and romance isn’t part of the plan. She walks backward into the dark, the man keeps following, and the floor quietly stops being a floor. What happens in the void The alien’s routine is simple. She picks up solitary men in her van, brings them to a
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For most of Under the Skin, she’s the one doing the looking. Then, alone in a borrowed room, she turns that flat, patient stare on herself, and the whole film holds its breath. What happens in Under the Skin Jonathan Glazer’s film casts Johansson as an extraterrestrial wearing a woman’s form, driving a van around
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All three scenes are here: the white-void opening, the black-room void scene with Adam Pearson, and the red-lit Highland mirror scene, where she finally turns that flat, patient stare on herself. Come for the skin, stay because you can’t look away; Glazer planned it that way.