The film Skunk from filmmaker Koen Mortier based on the novel by Geert Taghon opens with the script, “Every child has a story to tell,” and it tells you the story of Liam (played by Thibaud Dooms) who grew up in abuse and a system that failed him even as it tried to help him. There is a saying that “hurt people, hurt people” and you see that present in this film in multiple contexts with multiple characters.
The film often felt like a much darker Short Term 12. Thibaud Dooms has a very expressive face that shoulders a lot of pain, and it was hard to watch a lot of this film but also hard to turn away. He carries the film from the beginning until the end in a role that tasks him as a character who intermittently soils himself as a defense mechanism. This is not a hopeful film, it doesn’t show that once Liam finally got some help, everything was better. It showed that even that help wasn’t perfect.
One of the reasons Liam didn’t get help until he was already well into his teens, even though he was crying out for help by soiling himself to keep people at a distance, was because the aid worker would only act if he voiced it himself that he needed help. I’m not sure if that is actually the case in Belgium, where I presume the film is set but I don’t know why a child would need to verbally ask for help if they are asking for it with their actions and if their environment speaks to their need. Perhaps if he had been given a safe space at that point, he would have eventually opened up and then gotten the help he needed before he’d been too scarred as he was later. It took him a while to open up in his therapy sessions in the facility as a teen, but he eventually did. But as actions through the film and the climax would reveal, by that point the system had already failed him. Additionally, the facility was filled with other abused teens and not enough staff, so the teens would inflict their abuse on each other further victimizing each other, a cyclical cycle.
There was one scene sequence meant to show an initial volatility in Liam, when in a therapy session with Pauline (played by Natali Broods) he gets very emotional, crying, and then punches her. This happens while she asks him to listen to classical music. While a very dramatic scene we have been given no indication of the importance of this music to him before so there is no reason this particular music should have such a visceral trigger. Based on every scene with his parents you would not associate them with classical music. In a film that does a very good job of threading the needle on Liam’s character, this was one sequence that stuck out because it seemed designed to show a reaction, but the reaction didn’t seem to be motivated by anything from the character we’d gotten to know. A blemish in otherwise very tight character work.
The climax was particularly difficult, and I did have to close my eyes at parts, even though this was one of the many sequences the film did a good job of setting up and preparing you for the character of Liam to embark on. That didn’t make it any easier to watch.
Skunk had its World Premiere at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
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