Suffering for art

AN alien taking the form of a mysterious female cruising the dark, damp streets of Glasgow and seeking out random males to seduce for nefarious purposes sounds like a juicy premise - especially if the woman in question is played by Scarlett Johansson. She may be an A-list celebrity but her status allows her to make interesting career choices, away from the Hollywood norm. Under the Skin, a moody contemplation of identity and alienation and inflected with slightly bizarre elements of science fiction, is about as far removed as possible from the land of the summer blockbuster.

This is no big-budget star vehicle - in fact the scenes are generally so under-lit that at times viewers will have to squint into the gloom on the screen and use their imaginations to figure out what they're looking at. Director Jonathan Glazer evokes a dangerous, grimly uncertain mood by taking a less-is-more approach, and his sparse use of light is matched only by a distinct lack of dialogue.

The film, adapted by Glazer and Walter Campbell from the novel of the same name by Michel Faber, begins with a dazzling interstellar white light that eventually dissolves into a close-up of Ms Johansson's eye. It then proceeds to tell the story of an unnamed extraterrestrial who inhabits the body of an attractive female and spends her time luring strangers into her van with the promise of a sexual encounter.