Metrograph

Based on a novel of the same name by Scott Helm, making it Araki’s first film not from an original screenplay, Mysterious Skin stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and a young Brady Corbet as two former little league teammates born in smalltown Kansas who, when caught up with in young adulthood, have responded to childhood trauma in very different ways: Gordon-Levitt’s Neil, now living in New York, by cruising and hustling older men; Corbet’s Brian, now increasingly obsessed with the subject of alien abductions. “At once the most harrowing and, strangely, the most touching film I have seen about child sexual abuse… A complex and challenging emotional experience.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times