A raw, provocative US film about child sex abuse and two young boys' relationship with their baseball coach has become one of the surprise hits of the Venice International Film Festival.

Gregg Araki's dreamy, unsettling and often sexually explicit film Mysterious Skinfollows the very different path each boy takes in his search for love and understanding.

The boys in the story are eight-year-olds when they encounter the abusive coach and each other. But it is another 11 years before one of them, Brian, uncovers the truth he had buried under a long-held belief that he was once abducted and probed by aliens.

His journey begins when he awakes in the cellar of his home with a bleeding nose and no recollection of what has occurred, or with whom.

The other kid, Neil, whose teenage years are brilliantly played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is the coach's favourite, becoming a gay hustler in his small mid-west town before heading to New York's considerably more dangerous gay underworld.

Araki, whose first big-budget film The Doom Generation debuted at the festival in 1995, normally writes and directs his own material but departed from the norm to adapt Scott Heim's 1995 novel.

"What happens in the story did not happen to me but I was deeply moved by the story," he said in Venice.

"I thought it was the most beautiful, strangely powerful story I'd ever encountered."

Despite its disturbing scenes and subject matter, the Venice screenings have been packed and audience reaction positive, making Araki hopeful of reaching a broad audience.

"I know it's already only had a limited viewing. But if you had a picture of some of the people who have seen it already you would guess this person is going to freak out watching this film, but they loved it."

Araki is hopeful of swinging a US distribution deal during the Venice festival, having already hooked distribution in several European countries.

"I very much want a US audience to see this film. I think the film is quintessentially a US film," he said.

Actor Brady Corbet, who plays Brian, is under no illusions about the reaction in conservative middle America should the film ever be shown there.

"I don't think the heartland of America will be seeing it right off the bat. It will mainly show in the big cities and the coast, so it won't be seen in Kansas where it was shot."

"I think some people will be a little too shocked and will write it off."

Araki says he just wants the film "to live, to be out there and be talked about by people".

--<strong>AFP</strong>