As with Patricia Highsmith, his characters operate at a cool disconnect. His stories seem to possess a higher knowledge of how to communicate. When I first discovered Michel Faber I was startled by the clarity of his prose. Yet his lexicon of alienation is so enlivening and so unparalleled that I – as a superfan – cannot watch the narratively altered but tonally loyal screen adaptation without considering Faber’s superlative source. He is driven to write (and edit music) for personal reasons rather than a need for public recognition and it’s hard to know how he would feel about an attempt to single him out. In his own words, he is a “privacy junkie” who gets “peopled out”. A warm and illuminating 2011 profile by The Scotsman describes him as, “so reclusive he makes the Loch Ness monster look like an extrovert”. No doubt this is a state of affairs that suits the 53-year-old. It belongs to Michel Faber, author of the 2000 source novel. But there is a name that is routinely checked in the biographical detail of the film then left to fade into comparative anonymity. All coalesce to create a spellbinding and moving yet ineffable piece of cinema that stands apart from conventional narrative storytelling. Critics have been falling over themselves to praise Jonathan Glazer’s direction, Scarlett Johansson’s central performance and Mica Levi’s hypnotic score. The baffling and brilliant Under The Skin has finally arrived in UK cinemas.
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