I Lost My Body is yet another reminder that the most intrepid work in feature animation is being done outside of Hollywood; a deliriously attractive film that has no place amid the usual fodder turned out by studio animation divisions in the United States. It’s a French film, and France has a history of producing exquisitely unique animation from The Triplets of Belleville, Ernest & Celestine, My Life as a Courgette, The Little Prince, Persepolis, Nocturna, and Long Way North, to of course the outright classics of Fantastic Planet and Kirikou and the Sorceress. I Lost My Body firmly joins their ranks, not only for its mesmerizing visuals and eccentric creativity, but because of its soulfulness, its tender exploration of loneliness and loss.
Yet it’s a bit of a gruesome movie, more than most audiences are used to from animation at least, one half of its story following a disembodied hand escaping a lab and travelling the suburbs of Paris in a quest to find its body; and it can be pretty harrowing as it infiltrates the seedy and dangerous nooks and crevices of the city. In one scene it has to fend off rats in a subway track without being maimed by an impending train, and in another, precariously attempts to fly over traffic by hanging on to an abandoned umbrella. But all the while the sense of urgency is there and the hand develops its’ own personality in the moments it lingers on iconography significant to the person it has been separated from. It’s an absolutely compelling and emotionally engaging short film on its own terms, but of course I Lost My Body has to showcase why it’s so important this hand that grows paler by the minute reunites with the young man it belongs to. And so the film splits its time between this journey and the circumstances that led to the dismembering in the first place, concerning the Moroccan-born Naoufel (Hakim Faris), his psychological repercussions from a childhood trauma, and his relationship with a girl called Gabrielle (Victoire Du Bois).
Naoufel, whose childhood dreams of becoming an astronaut pianist were dashed when his parents died in a horrible car accident he feels partly responsible for, still carries the wounds of that earth-shattering episode through his simple everyday life in Paris. Like the last film I reviewed on Netflix, I Lost My Body is about mental health and survivors’ guilt, albeit less explicitly yet with much more grace. There’s a sad poeticism to Naoufel’s meandering loneliness and immature social awareness absent from Justice Smiths’ character in All the Bright Places that renders his choices of stalking his crush and taking up a job to get closer to her less immensely off-putting. It helps too that she responds in an appropriate way, both characters resonating very believably. And yet this doesn’t negate the beauty in their relationship and their scenes together. Their initial meeting through Gabrielle’s apartment intercom while Naoufel is delivering her a pizza but can’t get through the security door, is a nifty and really charming meet-cute. And one scene later on the roof of her apartment building while he’s still hiding his identity from her and they talk predestination and spontaneity, the atmosphere, animation lighting, and music (evocatively and emotionally composed by Dan Levy -not that one!) is all so gorgeously tender.
The movie itself is compellingly tender, as thrilling and macabre as it may at times get. It’s far more optimistic than the aforementioned film in where it takes Naoufel in the growth from his personal crisis. His drive to achieve some sense of power in his own life, to claim a small part of that great ambition he once had as a child, even for as small a thing as catching a fly (a recurring motif that ends in a horribly dark irony), is an incredibly powerful theme. It extends to his romantic goals with Gabrielle as well, and it so rarely turns out well for him that the finale, an unconscionably bittersweet one at that, is that much more triumphant and cathartic -wedding the two storylines together exceptionally in the process.
It also goes without saying that the animation is glorious. The film is directed by Jérémy Clapin from T.V. animation studio Xilam, and from what I can glean from their output, I Lost My Body is the most sophisticated work they’ve yet done. Not only is there a great depth to the textures, but there’s smooth dimension and motion to the characters, as though they’re half 3D -reminding me somewhat of the stylings of Roger Allers’ The Prophet adaptation, though far more appealing. Clapin and his animators really do create just some stunning images too, such as the hand on a rooftop at sunrise or using a lighter or just a moment of Naoufel and Gabrielle bonding in the wooden igloo he builds her on the roof of her apartment. It can’t be understated the power of Levy’s music throughout this as well, ambient and mentally and emotionally transporting in a grand synth and piano pairing that recalls Vangelis, winning both an Annie and a Cesar for his efforts.
The Oscar, I Lost My Body of course lost to Toy Story 4 -a film far less ambitious or interesting. This is a movie that really slipped under the radar, even more than its fellow Netflix nominee Klaus. It’s a shame I only got to it when I did. But then it’s also kind of perfect. Because this is a film that speaks deeply to isolation, physical and personal, and that longing for connection we all feel at this time, whether between one person and another, one person and the deceased, or even a dismembered hand and the body it once belonged to. I think we need a movie like I Lost My Body in 2020, to remind us we can still make that crucial leap.
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