The Reflecting Skin
| The Reflecting Skin | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Philip Ridley |
| Produced by |
Dominic Anciano Ray Burdis |
| Written by | Philip Ridley |
| Starring |
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| Music by | Nick Bicât |
| Cinematography | Dick Pope |
| Edited by | Scott Thomas |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by |
Virgin Vision (UK) Miramax Films (US) |
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Release date
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Running time
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95 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom Canada |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1.5 million |
The Reflecting Skin is a 1990 British-Canadian horror film written and directed by Philip Ridley and starring Jeremy Cooper, Viggo Mortensen and Lindsay Duncan. Described by its director as a "mythical interpretation" of childhood, the film weaves elements of vampirism, Surrealism, black comedy, and religious zealotry throughout its narrative about the perceptions and fantasies of an impressionable young boy in 1950s America. The film places the majority of its action outdoors around the dilapidated farms and in the wheat fields of Idaho shot in idyllic sunlight which belies the dark secrets of the characters and plot.
Eight year-old Seth Dove (Jeremy Cooper) lives in an isolated American prairie community in the 1950s. The film opens with Seth and his friends Eben and Kim, playing with a frog Seth has found in the fields. The boys inflate the frog by inserting a reed up its anus and leave it by the side of the road. When a local English widow, Dolphin Blue (Lindsay Duncan) stops to inspect it, Seth shoots the inflated frog with a slingshot, causing it to explode over Dolphin.
Seth retreats back to the small gas station where he lives with his harridan mother Ruth (Sheila Moore) and shy father Luke (Duncan Fraser). Seth’s older brother, Cameron (Viggo Mortensen), is away on military service in the Pacific (Ruth refers to them as "the pretty islands"). Seth serves gas to a mysterious group of young men driving a black Cadillac, who promise to see him again soon and drive off.
Seth is sent to Dolphin’s house to apologise for the frog prank. Dolphin is haunted by the memory of her dead husband, who hung himself for unknown reasons a week after their wedding. Surrounded by artifacts from her husband’s family’s whaling past, Seth takes some of her self-pitying remarks (she claims to be "two hundred years old") literally, and after learning about vampires from his father, who is reading a novel on that theme, Seth surmises that Dolphin must be a vampire.
After Eben goes missing, Seth and Kim go to Dolphin’s house to investigate, because Seth believes she is responsible for Eben's disappearance. The boys excitedly demolish Dolphin’s bedroom belongings, and run from the house screaming after spying on her masturbating. Seth runs home, and later finds Eben’s dead body floating in the water cistern. The local authorities believe Luke is responsible, because of a homosexual indiscretion years previously; believing himself to be doomed, Luke douses himself with petrol and incinerates himself.
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