Jennifer Reeder’s Knives and Skin has frequently been compared to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. It’s a good comparison. Both focus on the waves of grief that ripple out through a small town community after the loss of a young woman. In Knives and Skin Carolyn Harper (Raven Whitley) goes missing. In Twin Peaks, Laura Palmer is murdered. Both the film and the TV show have a dreamlike quality and large casts filled with strange characters. The most impressive part of Reeder’s fourth feature-length film is the way it diverges from Twin Peaks.
Lynch’s TV masterpiece focuses on Laura Palmer because she’s beautiful and popular. Lynch has said the show is his emotional response to the death of Marilyn Monroe. Carolyn is weird and unpopular, nothing like Palmer or Monroe. The film first shows her in her full marching band regalia, with Andy Kitzmiller (Ty Olwin) at the quarry. It’s a familiar scene with the two teens kissing until Carolyn cuts his forehead and says, “Now I can find you in the dark if we get separated.” They kiss more before she decides, “I’m not kissing you on the mouth.” Later on, when everyone is talking about their friendship with her, another student calls out the hypocrisy, saying, “I ignored her just like everyone else.”
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