Boogie Nights

In Under the Skin, a mother dies with next to no warning; her two grown daughters, trying to come to terms, flounder. This is heavily trodden turf, but British writer-director Carine Adler comes primed with freshman passion and a gift for showing more than she tells of deflected emotional distress. Nineteen-year-old Iris (television actress Samantha Morton, in a fine, fevered performance) dumps her job and her live-in boyfriend and goes into a tailspin of needy sexual encounters with total strangers, while squabbling bitterly over ashes and inheritance with Rose (Claire Rushbrook, last seen as the surly daughter in Secrets and Lies), the more settled older sister whom Iris believes to be her mother's favorite.

Under the Skin unfolds in the neat arc of a garden-variety movie of the week, with its reliable upward flip at the end. Yet with a small budget, a hand-held camera and the capable help of Ken Loach's cinematographer, Barry Ackroyd, Adler gives lyrical expression to Iris' desperate eros and to the tortured, polarizing interplay of the two sisters - one who's willing to feel anything but the pain of her loss, and the other who's working overtime at feeling nothing at all. Though it played to acclaim at Sundance and won prizes at the Toronto and Edinburgh film festivals, Under the Skin's disturbing theme and graphic sexual candor make it the kind of movie that gets swept under the rug as American distributors forage for the next The Full Monty. Good for Arrow Entertainment for picking up Under the Skin. Good for the Women's Film Festival for putting it on its slate. And good for Carine Adler who had the taste to bring back Rita Tushingham, delicately ravaged as the mother. Along with Julie Christie, Tushingham stands as one of the defining actors of '60s British cinema at its unruly best.

Under the Skin screens Wednesday, June 3, at 7:30 p.m., at the Los Angeles International Women's Film Festival (see Calendar Special Events for details), and opens in theatrical release June 5 at Laemmle's Music Hall.