***image1***
Between car chases and fart jokes lie a pair of the year's freshest indie films.
A first project, such as an independent film or a novel, possesses a freshness that its writer, director and/or actors will never have again.
Mysterious Skin
and
Junebug
both have this fragile, seasonal quality, like aspens turning, that has to be caught before it's gone.
Junebug
achieves such a fleeting balance between film-school clumsiness and high art-house snobbery. For one thing, such a kookily loveable cast will never again be assembled in this exact combination. Embeth Davidtz and Alessandro Nivola play an unlikely pair of newlyweds who venture into the heart of North Carolina-Madeline is an art dealer hoping to acquire the work of a nutty outsider painter, while George is the hometown boy made good, returning to show off his beautiful, cosmopolitan bride. This doesn't please younger brother Johnny (Benjamin McKenzie), who's surly, uncommunicative and insanely jealous of George-but his wife, the extremely enthusiastic, extremely pregnant Ashlee (Amy Adams, stealing every scene she's in) latches onto Madeline with fervor. Finally, George's parents, Peg and Eugene, struggle not to judge their new daughter-
in-law, innocent of the Southern social code over which she's constantly tripping.
Junebug
's ripe with hilarious heartbreak, as when the usually inert Johnny races to record a TV program on meerkats for his wife, Peg beats cake batter with evident hostility or Eugene wanders through the house on his quest for a missing screwdriver. The whole mass probably would collapse in mid-yuk (those wacky Southerners!) if it weren't for its intelligent script and sudden and mercilessly somber ending.
***image2***
Freshness borders on rawness in
Mysterious Skin
, based on Scott Heim's first novel but made personal by director Gregg Araki, who captures perfectly what it's like to grow up in the '80s in a Midwestern town where there's nothing to do but listen to Cocteau Twins and horrify the locals by wearing black lipstick-at times the film's so vintage it feels as though it was shot 20 years ago. Joseph Gordon-
Levitt pulls out all the stops as Neil, a teenage hustler who conceals the wounds of childhood sexual abuse with sublime James Dean indifference. His story is intercut with that of Brian (Brady Corbet), as nerdy and awkward as Neil is carelessly feline; in his wire-rimmed glasses and sweater vests, Brian's obsessed with UFOs, alien abduction and his own childhood experience of "missing time"-which somehow, he knows, involved Neil, though the two haven't seen each other since they last played Little League baseball.
Mysterious Skin
is blessed by supporting performances from Elisabeth Shue (
Leaving Las Vegas
) as Neil's alcoholic mom, Mary Lynn Rajskub as another troubled alien abductee and Bill Sage, taking on a gutsily creepy role as the baseball coach who uses videogames and junk food to lure Little Leaguers into his house. NC-17 with good reason,
Mysterious Skin
is literally a child's-eye view of abuse, giving viewers an utterly visceral sensation of its pathology. In one chilling scene, we watch as Neil fusses over a young baseball fan, mussing his hair and offering him candy, saying the exact same words we've heard from the coach-or, to quote WH Auden, "those to whom evil is done / do evil in return." Unless they somehow manage to pay for years of therapy, that is-or write and direct an independent film, fearless in its fresh naïvéte.
