Video: Scarlett Johansson strips in 'Under the Skin' trailer - Los Angeles Times
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Video: Scarlett Johansson strips in ‘Under the Skin’ trailer

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“You don’t want to wake up, do you?”

That’s what you hear Scarlett Johansson whisper at the start of a new trailer for “Under the Skin,” the provocative alien-on-Earth drama from director Jonathan Glazer (“Birth,” “Sexy Beast”) that premiered at last weekend’s Telluride Film Festival before heading to the Venice Film Festival.

As the preview makes clear, “Under the Skin” is a visually arresting movie filled with stunning images, including Johansson wearing very few clothes. (In the film itself, the actress is frequently fully naked.)

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The actress plays Laura, an alien from an unidentified place who uses sex -- or, at least, the promise of it -- to lure men off the streets and to their deaths.

In the trailer, Johansson has stripped from her clothes down to her underwear, part of a sequence in which she ultimately leaves the rest of her clothes on the floor as her unsuspecting victims follow behind.

When you see someone submerging into a thick black liquid in the preview, know that it’s not some new mud treatment at a Scottish spa.

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WATCH: Trailers from Venice

The movie was shot largely undercover in Glasgow, Scotland, as Johansson would climb into a van equipped with an array of hidden video cameras, each about the size of a pack of cigarettes. The actress would cruise the streets of Glasgow looking for men, and if they agreed to get into her van they subsequently would be told by Glazer that they had walked into a movie.
The film, which is looking for a theatrical distributor, has scarcely any dialogue and there’s no explanation of why Laura does what she does.

It was one of the more divisive films in Telluride, but director Alfonso Cuaron (“Gravity”) said it was the best film he’d seen at the festival.

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