A Tale of Sisters, ‘Under the Skin’ Has Intimate Touch

Carine Adler’s “Under the Skin” takes us into the comfortable suburban Liverpool home of a middle-aged woman (Rita Tushingham) who has just been told she has brain cancer, and has anywhere from three weeks to three months to live.

The terrible news and her subsequent swift demise devastate her 19-year-old daughter Iris (Samantha Morton) and her 24-year-old daughter Rose (Claire Rushbrook). Rose is happily married, also in suburbia, but the shocking loss of her mother sends Iris, who always felt her older sister was clearly her mother’s favorite, into a potentially lethal downward spiral.

Indeed, the film’s arc follows the falling apart of Iris’ life. She jettisons both job and longtime boyfriend to move into a seedy apartment and to have a fling with a handsome--and dangerous--stranger (Stuart Townsend), and soon her life dissolves into a series of degrading one-night stands and hard partying at the clubs.

So hungry for love, so acute is Iris’ lack of identity, that she frequently wears her mother’s wig and old fur coat, making her look like a hooker. As her life descends into an increasingly rapid tailspin, Iris alienates virtually everyone she knows and is plunging to rock-bottom.

All the while, Rose remains maddeningly obtuse to what’s happening to her sister. She too is consumed with grief but has the balancing sustenance and security of a husband and child. Rose is so appallingly self-absorbed, and judgmental in regard to her sister, that she unsympathetically leaves her in the lurch.

In her feature debut, Adler shapes her film gracefully and elicits a scorching no-holds-barred, totally selfless portrayal from Morton. The look, the feel of the film and its evocation of place seem just right, and “Under the Skin’s” quality of intimacy, coupled with its succinctness and briskness, owes much to cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, long-standing collaborator of director Ken Loach.

Then, out of nowhere, Adler rushes to an incredibly neatly-tied-up-with-a-shiny-ribbon finish, in the process skipping over a much-needed scene with Rose. It would have been wonderful to watch Rose undergo a change of heart, as played by an actress the caliber of Rushbrook, a Mike Leigh alumna who was featured in “Secrets and Lies.”

Had we been able to watch Rose undergo such a transformation, “Under the Skin” might well have had a chance at fulfilling the bright promise with which it started.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: The film has considerable sex, language and some violence.

‘Under the Skin’

Samantha Morton: Iris

Claire Rushbrook: Rose

Rita Tushingham: Mum

Stuart Townsend: Tom

An Arrow Entertainment release of a Strange Dog production for the British Film Institute and Channel Four Television in association with Rouge Films and Merseyside Film Production Fund. Writer-director Carine Adler. Producer Kate Ogborn. Executive producer Ben Gibson. Cinematographer Barry Ackroyd. Editor Ewa J. Lind. Music Ilona Sekacz. Production designer John-Paul Kelly. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 274-6869.