Skin Deep

Alex Koyama is a film-maker involved in the downtown art scene. She is charming and charismatic, but obsessive about her work, and utterly self-involved. As she prepares to shoot a drama about tattooing and the culture of pleasure and pain, the world around her begins to exist only to serve the film. She is drawn into a very strange world when she finds Chris Black through an ad in a tattoo magazine. Chris is equally obsessed about tattoos – not as art or body decoration, but for the sexual high achieved through the pain of the needle. For Alex, this is ‘living research’, and she overlooks the fact that Chris is a deeply damaged person. When Chris misinterprets her interest and falls in love, Alex is slightly flattered but remains indifferent and always willing to use – together, they embark on a journey that can only end in tragedy.