Mysterious Skin (2004)

The earlier films from the director Gregg Araki concentrate mainly on nihilistic teenage angst and remain something of an unacquired taste on my part.  While this film might be considered more of the same, it is considerably more maturely told and in its own way, moving.  The story follows the development of two teenaged boys, both of whom had been abused when they were eight years old by the same paedophile/baseball coach.  One of them, remarkably brought to life by the ex-child actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, may feel something of an outsider being raised by his single mother, but he has accepted the past (or thinks he has) and raises petty cash as a willing hooker for sad, sad Johns.  The other boy, an equally accomplished Brady Corbet (not an actor I can recall seeing before) has sublimated his experience into believing that he had been abducted by aliens.  However the status quo can not remain.  Gordon-Levitt moves to New York to join his childhood friend, Michelle Trachtenberg, and soon discovers that not all paid encounters involve pliable repressed men.  (I wish to mention here the very brave performance by B-movie villain Billy Drago playing a gentle AIDS sufferer).  Meanwhile Corbet has flashes of recalling his young baseball team mate, tracks down the now-chastened Gordon-Levitt and faces the true facts of his own odd behaviour and black-outs.  What one doesn't know is whether either character will find the strength to face the future.