His own hand, the poster informed, bore a birthmark in the shape of Puerto Rico.
On top of that, I had a huge strawberry birthmark in the centre of my chest that took years of laser treatment to remove.
He talked about Nathaniel Hawthorne's tale "The Birthmark," in which a brilliant scientist marries a woman whose extraordinary beauty is marred only by a blemish on her cheek and becomes obsessed with eliminating the imperfection.
Take Owen Wilson's bandaged face in The Darjeeling Limited, or Saoirse Ronan's birthmark in The Grand Budapest Hotel: both are notably asymmetrical touches that jar with the film's framing.
The attempt to needlessly fix a flaw brings to mind a short story by Hawthorne, "The Birthmark," in which a scientist becomes obsessed with removing a mark from the face of his otherwise lovely wife.
Indeed, Mr. Kass may have signaled his intentions by opening this week's meeting with a discussion of a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, called "The Birthmark," in which a scientist who marries a beautiful woman with a blemish on her cheek inadvertently kills her while trying to remove it.
