Thin Skin (2020 | USA | 90 minutes | Charles Mudede)
This film is the marquee event of Local Sightings 2021. It’s one of the very few films showing in the festival to have no virtual component, but rather must be seen live in the theater with a well-deserved audience: the first such screening, as the festival’s opening night screening, sold out, so a second screening on Monday the 20th was added as an encore. After years of buildup by way of public work-in-progress screenings at both SIFF and Northwest Film Forum dating as far back as 2019 (both of which organizations are acknowledged in the credits for their financial sponsorship), the hype was near-deafening by this time, and for good reason.
Although Thin Skin ends with the all-encompassing “A Film By” credit attributing auterist ownership to director/co-writer Charles Mudede, it’s clear that this story belongs almost entirely to Ahamefule J. Oluo. It was Oluo’s stage show, “Now I’m Fine” (which ran in the spring of 2016 at the Moore Theater, among other iterations), that suggested the narrative framework of this screenplay, complete with many scenes and lines being directly lifted from the one to the other. Oluo and his actual sister, the writer Ijeomo Oluo, play only lightly-fictionalized versions of themselves here, with their characters still sharing their same names. Even the incorporation of musical interludes between narrative pieces is a device that came from Oluo’s stage show, although the way they’re brought into this film is admittedly particularly elegant, lovely, and cinematic.
Oluo’s character, based on his own life story, is a passionate musician making his living at a soul-deadening office job in Seattle, going through a divorce with two young kids and crashing at his sister’s apartment in a cramped space also occupied by their mother (a delightful Annette Toutonghi, finally getting the meaty role she deserves after playing standout bit parts in many of the best local films of the last few years). His long-absent Nigerian father reaches out to him for the first time, which is the first of a sequence of events that culminates in Oluo becoming afflicted by a mysterious and horrific illness that may kill him. Doctor visits become an increasingly Kafka-esque nightmare as his physician’s incompetence becomes evident; that doctor is played with a hilariously obnoxious zeal by Oluo’s real-life writing partner, comedian Hari Kondabolu. In addition to his sister and mother, Oluo’s character is supported by a friend played by (and sharing the name of) comedian Dwayne Kennedy.
Co-written by Oluo, Mudede, and the writer Lindy West (who is also Oluo’s spouse), the script delivers bone-dry deadpan comedy (often making sardonic light of racist micro-aggressions), wrapped in the pathos of fighting to achieve a dream, not to mention simply to stay afloat, even under difficult circumstances. The imagery of Oluo’s miserably fluorescent-lit day job contrasts with the vibrancy of his musical escapes; the realism of his family life clashes against his funhouse-nightmare medical experience. Not everything in the narrative sees a resolution, but a climactic dream-sequence musical number featuring delicate and soulful vocals by the artist okanamodé provides the emotional catharsis needed to bring it all home.
Thin Skin played in-person on September 16th and 20th at the Local Sightings Film Festival; it’s one of the only films of the fest without a virtual component, but is sure to see wider release soon.
Follow other updates from this year’s festival via our Local Sightings 2021 coverage.