Caught somewhere between teen melodrama and electric Kool-Aid acid test, Knives and Skin is a beautifully crafted and sometimes moving film that, despite its best efforts, lacks something vital to keep the beat of its story alive. It’s as mesmerizing as it is tedious. Drawn out but not exactly lived in, like a fable. During viewing, I found myself constantly torn between hypnotized by the kaleidoscope writer/director Jennifer Reeder delivers and flat-out bored. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot to love about Reeder’s film, it’s just missing something more than a teenage girl that prevents the audience from suspending disbelief for it’s nearly two-hour runtime.
Carolyn, a young band geek just discovering her sexuality, is cast aside by the town playboy after rejecting his advances. She trips on a gravel path and hits her head on a rock as he drives away with her glasses. Delirious and heartbroken, she passes out. Oh, and her mother has a knife and is trying to get into her room. This is where our film begins. What follows is a methodical inspection into the characters surrounding Carolyn – her friends, her mother, her friend’s parents, teachers, and grandparents. Carolyn’s disappearance becomes almost incidental as the stories happening between the remaining characters take over the rest of the film – with only little moments returning to Carolyn’s role in their lives. The film tries to say a lot, but ends up just lingering on unanswered questions.
Mixing tones and genre in thick layers, and obviously inspired by Twin Peaks’ small town mystery angst, Knives and Skin needs exactly what its title suggests: some real stakes. They take too long to develop. It takes the town nearly a week to form a search party for Carolyn. The characters have Vonnegut-esque quirk, with secluded, intriguing lives and stories that we get to glimpse at an arm’s distance. Unfortunately, the filmmaker believes this is enough to keep the audience interested. There’s too much oddball and not enough actual story. We keep living in these people’s lives while their friend is missing, and there’s not enough reaction, only moments of inaction.
Temptingly stylized with ever popular neon saturations, lens flare, and dissolve overlays, Knives and Skin offers a postmodern art exhibit dipped in themes of desperation and longing. It’s an eclectic blend of style that gives off kinetic energy in each dynamic shot. Cinematographer Christopher Rejano composes portraits rather than scenes, and lingers in the emotional weight of a well-thought-out closeup. Sometimes, however, there is a feeling that the overwrought style is taking away from potential intimacy. It only exists for the sake of aesthetic, playing as though Reeder doesn’t trust the shot would be beautiful on its own, which is unfortunate because above all else, this is a truly beautiful film.
The cast is really what takes the ice cream cake throughout the snail-pace drama. The eccentric small-town families are all well-defined and interesting. Each character is milked to full potential, establishing a strong collection of bold misfits interconnected by the town. Marika Engelhardt provides an enigmatic performance as Lisa Harper, mother to the lost Carolyn (Raven Whitley). Both parts raw and dramatic, she’s a spellcasting actress who is believable even in her most melodramatic. Kate Arrington is equally mesmerizing as Renee Darlington, a lost-for-life mother who serves as a caricature of the perfect pregnant ‘50s housewife in her pink diner dress living in a glam glitter haze. They are highlights of an otherwise off-balance narrative that takes its time developing a coming-of-age story for a group of younger actors whose arcs are not nearly as captivating.
The young actors themselves, however, are impressively strong. Jesse Darlington (Robert T. Cunningham) as empathetic youth is depressingly underused in the overarching plot despite some stellar scene stealing in every moment he’s given. Ireon Roach, in a debut role as Charlotte Kurtich, gives a stunningly self-affirmed performance shining through her dramatic wardrobe. Delivering one of the most poignant lines in the film, Ireon asks fellow classmate Laurel (Kayla Carter) if she’s a “c*nty slut or a bitchy tease.” The set up that these are the only two options given to young women on the verge of sexual awakening is a depressingly accurate expression of the desperation these girls have to define themselves as something other than object. All while pinning together a Homecoming dress. Ireon doesn’t shy away from the internal commitment that she is neither and both. And, really, she’s just trying to make it out of this town. They all are.
It is this fact that alleviates some of the tedium brought on by the pacing: the story is not about Carolyn being missing, but about how in a small town where everyone knows each other, no one is connected. Everyone wears a costume. No one looks organic, like dramatic hyperboles of their actual selves and the things they’re trying to hide. Costumes play a large role in the themes Jennifer Reeder tries to expound, using a lion emblazoned t-shirt as a metaphor for schizophrenia and a pair of yellow glasses as a stand in for the soul. The wardrobes are thoughtful, meaningful, and a visual stand out for the narrative discourse.
It takes about an hour and fifteen minutes for events to begin unraveling, which feels indicative of a filmmaker whose major works up until now have been short films. We get some reveals, a few small payoffs and “win” moments, but it somehow still feels too little, too late. Even while the a cappella remixes of New Wave hits create a haunting atmosphere, there’s nothing haunted left to keep inalienable interest.
What you may have noticed reading this review is that I am both in love with this film and someone daunted by it. Ultimately, there’s just something missing in Knives and Skin, some charm or endearment that might save a possibly glowing feature for Reeder. The themes are both reductive and complex. They’re the stories we sell to others and the stories we live ourselves. The adults existing in their misery while the children live under veils. I honestly couldn’t tell you if it’s brilliantly deep or suicidally trivial. Like a girl wearing too much makeup, there are too many layers, too many thematic, cinemagraphic, and diegetic choices piled on top of each other to attempt discourse. Any truth gets buried in taffeta and color correction. And as expected, by the end, there’s really no resolution, other than tiny moments of connection, but maybe that’s what it’s all about. If Reeder’s goal was to make a film about longing for connection, she may have forgotten to connect with her audience.
As I’ve said before, that doesn’t make Knives and Skin a bad film. It has cutting moments of intimate stimulation, but just as many distant breaks that add little to the skin of the film. Reeder’s disconnect with the viewer may have even been intentional, a high-brow self reflection on what it means to really connect with anyone. Because do we, really?
Knives and Skin is now available on VOD and Digital HD from IFC Midnight.
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