During the first act of “Under the Skin,” time is subordinated to action or movement, while in the second act, movement and action are subordinated to the flow of time. In the first act, The Woman has a clear mission, she routinely picks up men, seduces them, and takes them back to her den. In the second act, The Woman thinks rather than acts. The film shows her confused, disoriented, and letting go to the flow of time. She explores the pleasures of life with a newfound curiosity; she tries food, listens to music, and engages in sexual intercourse with a stranger. The Woman finds herself unable to act and react in a direct and an immediate manner. She is left to explore, with no prospect of success, to roam, to linger. In essence, the character does not act without a self-awareness of her actions.
“Under the Skin” ends with The Woman sleeping in a shed in the woods. The film cuts to a dissolve of her against a landscape of nature, as if she has become one with nature. By embodying the other, the image of The Woman is no longer separate from her environment. She becomes an integral part of the interconnected unity of all things. This beautiful shot gets disrupted by a man feeling her up. The Woman, now vulnerable to the world around her, runs away in fear. The predator eventually catches up and attempts to rape her. Again, that sinister ‘hunting’ tune can be heard in the background, only this time, the roles are reversed. The hunter becomes the hunted. After the Woman kicks the man off her, and walks off, the camera rotates around the man who is frozen in shock, revealing The Woman. While trying to rip off her clothes, he ripped part of her skin, revealing what is under the skin, black matter. The man runs off into the woods, and the film cuts to The Woman sitting on her knees as she takes off her human skin. The Woman, now a black ant-like figure, looks at her human face.
“Under the Skin” starts with the assembling of the organs and ends with the dismantling of organs. With this endless becoming, one identity collapses, creating and giving birth to another self. Suddenly, gasoline gets spilled all over her body, we see a trail of fire that catches up to her, and she is set ablaze. The color white seems to appear, whenever there is a birth depicted on screen. Black appears whenever a death occurs. However, when the now burning Woman falls and drops into a snowy field, the camera cuts to a shot of black smoke penetrating the white sky. Instead of cutting to a black screen, the film cuts to a white sky as snowflakes fall towards the cameras point of view. This is not a death, but a rebirth of sorts, the Woman is finally set free, becoming one with nature.