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Snakeskin
Directed by Gillian Ashurst
Starring: Melanie Lynskey, Boyd Kestner, Dean O'Gorman, Oliver Driver
Running Time: 1:34
Country: New Zealand
Year: 2002
Web: Official Site
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A homage to the American road movie set in New Zealand, Gillian Ashurst's debut Snakeskin is a colorful and fun ride that sometimes bites its own tale.
Alice (Melanie Lynskey) and her best friend Johnny (Dean O'Gorman), two adolescents obsessed with American culture, decide to hit the road in their convertible, looking for adventure just like in American road movies. After picking up Seth (Boyd Kestner), a hitchhiker dressed like a cowboy, they will get more than what they had bargained for as their strange passenger seems to have made lots of enemies.
Openly eyeing Thelma & Louise and Kalifornia, Snakeskin looks like a love letter from the director to the films that influenced her, and to some extent, underlines the impact of American culture on New Zealand and of the recurrent American dream. Her film embraces the clichés of the genre with a parodied but always respectful approach. The screenwriting roads don't go through uncharted territories here, which doesn't really matter since it's the characters, rather than the situations that bring life to the odyssey. Colorful, sometimes caricatured characters that bring energy to Snakeskin surround the charming and radiant Alice, the core of the film. Rave-goers, drug traffickers, locals, skinheads and a Nick Cave incarnation cross each other's paths, forming some kind of exotic gumbo that's fun to watch.
The ultimate irony is that Alice and Johnny, fed with American movies, dream of Route 66, which is in reality as desolate as the New Zealand roads they take. From their fake gun to the plastic symbol inside their car, their dream is as fake as the props used in the movies they watched. Hollywood feeds the world with fake dreams, movies, which the rest of the world blindly believes in. The film's other theme, "Why look somewhere else for what is close to us?" proves to be predictable and cliché but doesn't affect the film. However, most disappointing is the fantastic turn that the story takes, which results in a cheap ending that tends to make the whole thing looks like a Twilight Zone episode. Since Ashurst was already holding the spectator with her characters and sense of parody, there was no need for such a twist to lessen the purpose of this road movie.
Ashurst's direction is kinetic and inventive, focusing on the characters rather than showing off some picturesque postcard shots. The cast composed of young faces is fresh and lively. Lynskey makes the movie work with her ingenuity and charisma while O'Gorman and Kestner successfully get into the skin of the love interest and tough guy.
After getting under her Snakeskin, Ashurst definitely has enough gas to take the road to Hollywood.
Fred Thom
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Snakeskin review
