Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8748 in VHS
• Released on: 1993-02-10
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Formats: Color, NTSC
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 95 minutes

Customer Reviews

The finest poetic surrealism since Jean Cocteau
A unique and deeply moving film by Philip Ridley. The dreamlike atmosphere never becomes disconnected from reality, which adds to the impact. Humorously oddball scenes suddenly become serious and human, while moments of quiet introspection are often interrupted by a jolt of unexpected hilarity. The moments of beauty and poignance go well beyond anything David Lynch has accomplished -- though Lynch fans would certainly enjoy this movie.

The excellent musical score sounds like a cross between Ralph Vaughan Williams (or Gerald Finzi) and Philip Glass on an exceptionally good day. There are several well-integrated references to moody icons: Andrew Wyeth's paintings, the stuffed birds of "Psycho" -- and in the breathtaking final sequence, the sliver of a cloud slicing across the moon (here, the setting sun) as it does at the start of "Un Chien Andalou," the root of the surrealist film tree.

This is absolutely *not* a movie for everyone. Those who have no patience with leisurely, meditative character studies -- or who couldn't care less about brilliant cinematography -- should stay away. On the other hand, fans of (for example) Ingmar Bergman's dark, intense films of the 1960s will love this movie.

"The Reflecting Skin" should already be on DVD. The fact that it's currently out of print even in VHS is little short of ... well, surreal.

Ridley's Haunting Masterpiece
This is obviously a film you either love or hate - and I'm with the 'yea's! Actually, I've corresponded with Philip, the writer/director and he is a true Renaissance man (he is also a great painter, author, playwright and children's book author). Like my compatriot in SF, I also weep uncontrollably at the last five minutes; no matter how many times I've seen the film - I think it touches a very deep primal nerve in those of us who are haunted by the loss of childhood innocence! What more can I say - the film is brilliant, but obviously not for everyone!

American Gothic
This a highly original, creepily surreal film dealing with the loss of innocence, the depths of irrational childhood fears, and the dark underbelly of middle America. If this description makes it sound like a David Lynch film, you're not far off the mark. Ridley's film shares with Lynch's work the artful, compositionally balanced cinematography, the disquieting psychosexual undertones, and, yes, even the wooden characters. The one-dimensional archetypes that populate this film have been criticized by many reviewers, but, as in Lynch's films, the "flatness" of the acting/dialogue serves an important purpose: the characters are mere canvases for the depiction of aspects of the work as a whole. The overall mood of the film is paramount, and the various libidinal energy flows underlying it are best served by characters who act as conduits for paticular eruptions of perversity and other compositions of incident which manifest in discreet situation rather than autonomous personality. The collective madness at the heart of America, the latent violence that came to a head with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, repressed sexualities, and oedipal sadism: this film is NOT easy to swallow. That the seemingly placid expanses of midwestern fields could incubate such twisted madness suggests that "the world's breadbasket" has been feeding us something far more sinster than corn and wheat.