Eighth Grade, The Skin of the Wolf

The awkwardness of Eighth Grade

Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade is a fine feature debut that captures the anxieties and awkwardness of adolescence. Burnham's background is in writing and comedy, so it is no surprise that these are the film's strengths. The film suffers from a lack of visual imagination and a certain narrowness, but Burnham achieves what he sets out to do. Part of the feeling of insularity of this project has to do with the social isolation of the film's protagonist, Kayla, memorably portrayed by Elsie Fisher. We see Kayla navigating the last week of middle school, dealing with her burgeoning sexuality, struggling with social functions and attempting to reach out with social media.

Much of the success of the film stems from Burnham's empathy for his characters. even Kayla's dorky single Dad is shown with more compassion than is usual in teen comedies. If Eighth Grade, at times, seems overly familiar, that is because we have all been in Kayla's shoes and, despite the presence of smart phones, the social dynamics of adolescence has not changed all that much. It seems like damning with faint praise to call this a nice little film, but the film's focus on Kayla keeps its scope small. However, it is precisely that tight focus that makes us care about Kayla's plight.

A completely different kettle of fish is Samu Fuentes' directorial debut, The Skin of the Wolf. The film tells the tale of a trapper who lives alone in the Pyrenees. He bargains for a wife and helpmate with a miller who gives the trapper one of his daughters to pay off a debt. When that woman dies, the miller is forced to hand over his other daughter. This daughter, Adela, cannot submit to living with the brutish trapper, Martinon, and concocts a scheme to release her from her travails.

The Skin of the Wolf moves at a very deliberate pace, mimicking the routines of the peasantry of Northern Spain. Though the film is set in the mid twentieth century, the way of life these characters lead is centuries old. The wordless first third of the film establishes Martinon's day to day struggles as he traps wolves to trade their pelts for cash, hunts deer for meat and tends his small garden. Nature is portrayed as both beautiful and deadly. Martinon is portrayed as not altogether different from the animals he stalks. The tactile quality of The Skin of the Wolf is brought out not only by its gorgeous cinematography, but also by its sound design: whether it be the rustling of storms or the sound of Martinon scraping the flesh off his wolf pelts.

Unlike Burnham's empathy, Fuentes regards nature and his characters with an imperious objectivity. A good example of this is the filming of the sex scenes. Martinon views women merely as means to a male heir. Fuentes films the brusque and animalistic copulation, which in the present day would be classified as rape, with a cold, impassive eye. Fuentes evidently feels he does not need to heighten the audience's outrage at this brutality, it speaks well enough for itself. There is a bit of the perversity of Bunuel in this. Fuentes is cocking his snook at Spain's patriarchal past in a way that does not coddle a bourgeois audience.

Some things here don't add up. Martinon seems to live in an abandoned monastery high in the mountains, but the effect is falsely fanciful and jars with the realistic tone of the film. The film's objectivity probably limits its audience, there is no romance or redemption as a sop. Thus, the film has had little commercial or critical impact. However, Fuentes' cold-eyed point of view is what made the film stand out for me. Fuentes draws no easy moral lesson from his story, but presents a dog eat dog world where man is little different from his feral, mammalian counterparts. Overall, an impressive and memorable debut. (2/22/19)