In this all too cynical, post-modern world, it’s rare to find a movie that can still make you squirm for all the right (that is, wrong) reasons. Mysterious Skin is such a film; a pleasingly upsetting account of child molestation and the emotional damage it inflicts. Greg Araki, the bad-boy of gay cinema is better known for punk-styled assaults on homo-sensibility like The Living End and Totally Fu==ed Up!, accounts of directionally challenged youth from Nowhere, USA. Then came Scott Heim’s titular novel and Araki’s burning desire to bring it to a wider audience. The story is not unfamiliar. Young boys entrusted to the care of a little-league coach are asked to participate in things no one should ever have to. Forward ten years and the damage is palpable: one is determined to find out what he’s spent a decade blocking (he suspects alien probes), the other has found a means of escape through hustling. Their paths are on a collision course that culminates in an emotionally tangled finale that is as distressing as it is sincerely heart-warming. What distinguishes Mysterious Skin, not only as a Greg Araki movie, but for any film that involves the touchy subject of paedophilia, is a lack of hysteria. Araki shows commendable maturity, preferring to concentrate on the complexity of emotional entanglements. While molestation is a central platform, restrained direction allows his strong cast to work (rather than be worked by) the muscular script. In all respects, Mysterious Skin is a major achievement that takes a reasoned stand without the panic usually afforded this topic. // COLIN FRASER