The movie Sofia Coppola thinks deserved “more recognition”
Filmmakers aren’t obligated to make the kinds of movies they enjoy watching in their downtime, with one of Sofia Coppola‘s favourites being completely unlike anything she’s ever written or directed.
Ever since her first feature, The Virgin Suicides, was released in 1999, Coppola has focused almost entirely on drama, although not without imbuing the likes of Lost in Translation, Mary Antoinette, and The Beguiled, to name but three with her signature stylistic flourishes, winning an Academy Award and two Golden Globes along the way.
However, when pressed to name the 21st Century films that she deemed to be the best, one of the writer and director’s contenders was a disconcerting psychological sci-fi thriller shot almost entirely on location, which regularly used hidden cameras to capture unwitting subjects who were then asked for their permission for the footage to be used. What makes it even more unique is that an A-list Hollywood superstar played the lead role.
Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin stars Scarlett Johansson as a malevolent alien disguised as a human woman who drives around Scotland in a van to lure unsuspecting men to their doom, where they’re seduced and promptly exiled to another dimension to effectively become a source of sustenance.
It may have been voted as the best British film of the 21st Century in a poll of critics and secured a Bafta nomination for ‘Outstanding British Film’, but Under the Skin failed to catch on worldwide. Bombing at the box office after only managing to recoup a little over half of its production budget in ticket sales, the reception proved plenty polarising after reviews and general audiences found themselves dumbstruck, disturbed, and disgusted in equal measure.
There’s nothing quite like Under the Skin, and Coppola is far from the only prominent filmmaker to lavish it in praise, but she nonetheless lamented the fact it failed to catch on. Speaking to The New York Times, the Priscilla director lauded Johansson’s mesmerising central performance, with its distinctly unsettling style proving to be what drew her to it the most.
Despite an ensemble comprised almost entirely of non-actors, Coppola called it “well cast” before celebrating its more unusual elements: “It was so weird and innovative the way they shot it and incorporated real people. I thought that movie should have gotten more recognition.”
A full-fledged cult classic a decade on from its release, Under the Skin now regularly finds itself troubling ‘Best Of’ lists in both the sci-fi genre and 21st Century cinema as a whole, but that wasn’t entirely the case when Glazer’s haunting film first arrived on the scene. It may have taken longer than usual, but at least the incomparable road trip tale with an inter-dimensional twist is getting the respect it deserves.
