Reflecting Skin | 
 enlarge | Director: Philip Ridley
Actors: Viggo Mortensen, Lindsay Duncan, Jeremy Cooper, Sheila Moore, Duncan Fraser
Studio: Lions Gate/Live Home Video
Category: Video
List Price: $19.98
Buy Used: $6.00
You Save: $13.98 (70%)
New (4) Used (12) Collectible (4) from $6.00
Rating:  39 reviews
Sales Rank: 6217
Format: Color, Ntsc
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: VHS Tape
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 95 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 4.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 6302283620
UPC: 012236898832
EAN: 9786302283624
ASIN: 6302283620
Theatrical Release Date: 1991
Release Date: February 10, 1993
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 34 more reviews...
Tormenting November 10, 2008
L. Kiss (Los Angeles, CA USA)
This is one of those films that sticks with you like a fever dream. Essential viewing at least once.
 definitely lynch-like... loved it March 11, 2008
Lindsey Dyer (St. Paul)
I have been watching The Reflecting Skin for over 10 years now. I first saw it on a whim back in 1999 with a group of friends. We rented it at the video store because it said "If you like David Lynch, then you'll like..." If you have seen this movie, you will understand when I say that it has become a cult favorite among my friends. I found this cool blog that I have been following (http://thereflectingskin.wordpress.com/). You'll find that you need a forum to discuss this film once watching it.
I gave it 5 stars because of the "strangeness" factor. I love surprises, and The Reflecting Skin does not disappoint.
 surreal film March 21, 2007
P. Skinner (Australia)
This film is not scary and I don't think it is meant to be. The soundtrack is eerie the location foreboding....The whole thing seems like a bad dream but not a nightmare....
Whats with the clucking twins? Now thats creepy!!!
A movie that shines all throughout its core June 11, 2006
yorgos dalman (Holland, Europe)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
There are movies, they say, that provoke just two kind of reactions: one side of the audience thinks it's the best thing ever made, the oposite army thinks it's the worst piece of pretentious crap ever inflicted on the human race. And there are no such things as mediocre comments on this kind of Very Special Films.
But, of course, there is no such phenomenon: every movie has it's mediocre reactions and a whole bunch of viewers who will say after the screening "Oh, okay. Nice. Pretty good huh?" But it's fun to think that these kind of Very Special Films can provoke controverion and mass pumped-up hysteria.
We've seen it with movies like "Brazil", "Eraserhead", "Begotten", "Stranger than paradise" and "The Tenant". Arthouse darlings with a cult following and a lynching mob to go with it. Often over-stylized, so that the form, the off-beat technical approach either sucks you in or completely puts you off.
The content? Often challeging subjects, wrapt in meptaphorical or surreal stories. It's cinema on the edge, and it either let's you walk there with it, or pushes you over.
Okay, so, here is "The Reflecting Skin", and I tell you, it is one of those movies you either think is the best you've ever seen or the worst kind of pretentious crap in years.
The story is about a bunch a young kids doing all kinds of naughty things kids tend to do because, well... because they are kids.
Like blowing up a live frog in the face of a woman immediately after the opening credits. Okay, a little teenage horror comedy we have here, but it's the filmstyle of debutant Philip Ridley that sets the tone right away: his training as a professional art painter has taught him all about imagery, (camera) angels, and use of striking colours.
So the infinite fields of rye the three boys, Seh and his two buddies, stand in are harshly yellow, the summer sky is blindingly blue, the entire panorama very painterish pittoresque and within it the victim: the Muze, in this case a mysterious young woman, her hair blond as the sunrays, her clothing black as the grieving night. And when the kids make the frog explode, her mysterious pale face is splashed with blood that is redder then the veriest red you've ever seen when you witness a live frog explode.
All this filled with bombastic orchesral music for hysterical strings and dito women's choir.
And it works. It completely works. That is... for me. Because I am one of those people in the audience that is suckered into this gem from this very opening.
It did and still does it for me because I see the over-done form as made by an adult director who still has the heart of a child. And the child in him likes to play and make people laugh at darkly, almost forbidden things.
So more delicious non-sense (or rather nightmare-sense) ingredients follow: A mother who seems to suffer from daily life and tends to smells gasoline all through the house any moment of the day, a dad who reads pulp novels and carries a hidden secret, there is the mourning young widow who ceeps a small wooden case filled with bodily left-overs from her lover who committed suicide, a drunk rock-throwing priest, and a shining black car with four strange guys dressed in black that rides all throught out the picture on moments you'd least expect it.
Then dead bodies begin to turn up: the kids, one by one they disappear and are found back later in abandoned crooked sheds throughout the infinitely strechtched out acres. More wicked David Lynchian (!) people turn up, do their things, say their lines and vanish.
Then dad commits suicide after getting the blame for the dead kiddies and as a result, Seth's bigger brother Viggo Mortensen comes home.
(Yes, that's Our Viggo, long before the "Rings"-fame. And he fits right in, completing his catchy silent-character-quatroligy; together with "The Indian Runner", "Prison" and "The Passion of Darkly Noon" .)
The plot meanwhile keeps on twisting and twisting and when all ends in death, guilt and beauty, Seth, the remaining kid, has underwent an instand-catharsis, a blitztrip to adulthood and a cinematic tour-de-force, rolled in to one.
And, o yes, all this in a brilliant, bursting, and flaming sunset no movie goer has ever experienced before. The best or the worst, that's for all of us to fight out.
Where is the DVD? July 5, 2005
Mike (USA)
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
This disturbing film left me mesmerized. It was like a twisted yet comedic nightmare. Anyone attracted to the work of directors like Lynch or Cronenberg, will find this Phillip Ridley film to be weird and wonderful. The cinematography is dramatic and breathtaking. Unfortunately, this beautiful film is only available on VHS in a pan and scan format. Please, please, please release this film on DVD in a widescreen format.
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