Comforting Skin Trailer (2011)

For years, Koffie (Victoria Bidewell) and Nathan (Tygh Runyan) have helped each other navigate a gritty world full of too many of the wrong sorts of people. Nathan listens to Koffie's drunken, self-deprecating ramblings by night and by day Koffie helps Nathan with his paralyzing social anxiety. Lonely and at the end of her tether, Koffie gets a late-night tattoo as a last-ditch attempt to imbue her life with some excitement other than that afforded by lecherous drug cartels and bawdy workmates. With her tattoo, however, comes a mysterious connection that fills Koffie's life with taunting whispers and frantic desires.

Derek Franson's first feature is darkly intriguing, toying with viewers' grasp of the psychological-drama genre much as Koffie's new companion toys with her perception of the world around her. Franson presents a familiar world turned on its head as the grayer parts of Vancouver serve as the only stable element in a temperamental maelstrom that must, inevitably, bring all parts of Koffie's concrete and imagined realities into collision. Like skin stretched thin over too many broken bones, Koffie's obsessive relationship stretches her sense of self until her once dull, dead-end life becomes dangerously exciting and frighteningly fast-paced. As Koffie quickly learns, companionship often comes at a price.