The Reflecting Skin

This film depicts a harsh adult world of violence, passion and pain, seen through the eyes of a seven-year-old. Superficially, Seth Dove's childhood is perfectly normal. The Idaho farmlands in the fifties, Dad runs a garage and Mum runs the home. Big brother Cameron is a soldier in the Pacific. But things start happening and Cameron comes home. Seth misinterprets what's going on, wants to protect his brother, and the result is several mysterious deaths.

Comment:
I wanted to make The Reflecting Skin a truly cinematic experience. The journey the child makes - and the magical horrors he witnesses - gradually increase in significance until by te end, Seth has become a child of our time, and his fears are the fears we all experience - fear of loneliness, fear of death, fear of nuclear holocaust, fear of sex, fear of the dark. The world it presents is stylised, operatic (both in look and language) and mythical: a dark, hanting fairty story of barbaric beauty.

Philip Ridley