Epic dermis

Madagascar Skin is appealing

by Ken Feil

MADAGASCAR SKIN. Written and driected by Chris Newby. With John Hannah and Bernard Hill. An International Film Circuit release. At the Kendall Square.

There are obvious freaks and there are those who have the luxury of concealing their freakishness under presentable façades. Obvious freaks are human phantoms: we see them and yet we see through them. They are intensely visible and yet we will them into invisibility.

Harry, one of the protagonists of Madagascar Skin, is the obvious sort of freak. A burgundy birthmark in the shape of Madagascar stains half his face. Harry wears his otherness on his skin, and over time he has allowed it to seep through his dermis and down into his very disposition. Despite his desire to be caressed, as well as to return the favor, he lacks the ability to make contact; he is afraid to be seen. Harry longs to rid himself of this existential exoskeleton, this blot on his bodily landscape. Yet every attempt to transcend it results in that most common occurrence which is his worst fear: people look at him.

The movie opens with Harry wandering about a disco searching for touch. He encounters two men passionately entwined, so much so that one man has slid into the other's skinlike latex shirt. The two make out within their own private membrane, stretching the shirt as well as the limits of erotic closeness. When Harry climbs in with them, it's closing time, and bright white light suddenly obliterates the darkness that he depended on in order to touch and be touched without being seen. The two men stare blankly at him; he awkwardly slithers out from under the latex and back into lonely despair. At home, he takes a razor to his face in hopes of skinning away his birthmark but instead applies the razor to the decaying walls of his council flat. He peels off endless layers of brittle wallpaper and finds nothing.

Harry flees to a sparsely populated seaside village where he can live in his own private shell. At the beach, he runs into a seemingly heterosexual thief named Flint. Their introduction also involves digging beneath the surface of the situation -- in this case, Harry discovers Flint on the beach, bleeding, unconscious, and buried up to his neck in sand. In an attempt to save him before the tide comes in, Harry grabs the shovel left behind by Flint's would-be murderers and digs. But the real unearthing occurs in the course of their relationship: Flint attempts to pierce Harry's gloomy self-loathing with grotesque humor and exhume a trace of joy; Harry tries to disinter the courage to express his desire.

The film remains refreshing throughout its 90-odd fairly plotless minutes. Newcomer Chris Newby (Anchoress) provides an original screenplay and expert directing; John Hannah (Four Weddings and a Funeral) as Harry and Bernard Hill (Shirley Valentine) as Flint mix humor and pathos; and there's an intensely sensual environment of colors, textures, and sounds. During the first 15 minutes, Harry remains silent, though the squeaky sound and rubbery surface of the latex shirt, the ripping sounds as Harry slices the wallpaper, and the wet rocks on the beach as Harry's car crunches over them convey Newby's awareness of touch, texture, and appearance, things foremost in Harry's mind. The film also eludes genre classification: existential gloom on par with any of Ingmar Bergman's chamber dramas alternates with Chaplinesque physical comedy, witty Wildean banter, and the erotic longing of a Terence Davies film.

Madagascar Skin is all about human surfaces and shells, attempts to penetrate them, tickle them, transcend them, and finally to accept and live with them. Flint finds Harry's Madagascar skin appealing. By the end of the film, he has pried Harry out of his shell and made him feel comfortable in his own skin. Flint, fugitive from the police, and Harry, fugitive from society, flee into each other's arms and, surprise, find themselves.