I Lost My Body Review (Film, 2019)

The trickiest part of creating an animated film is finding a style that matches the story you want to tell. You want something distinct so your film stands out. You want something expressive so the characters’ emotions are clear. You want to create a world that makes sense for the story you’re telling.

For me, I Lost My Body is half of a great animated film for this reason. The grotesque half of the story works so well with this art style. The story of a disembodied human hand exploring the world on a mission it cannot describe to anyone or anything else is spectacular. The shaky line work, muted colors, and dark shadows of the film are a believable world for this character to live in and explore. The perspective of a hand allows rats and door frames to seem like real, larger than life dangers to our nonspeaking protagonist. I would gladly watch a feature length film of this hand exploring the city in this world.

The other half of the story is a miss for me. A young man, struggling to find his way in life, goes from a job he doesn’t love to radically changing his life in order to attract a woman he instantly fell for without ever seeing her. I can see how a drab color scheme could reflect the mentality of the main character. The sketchy style of the linework could reflect a level of uncertainty. The story being told with this character just isn’t unique enough to really soar with such a distinct, unpleasant style.

Writer/director Jérémy Clapin made some very bold choices for this film. The visuals of the film pull heavily from the world of the cinematic Gothic. The inky black shadows are not the stark lines of noir but the overwhelming approach of danger in early black and white horror. The art style and production design of the film feel like something Val Lewton would produce. The moments that work are eerily beautiful.

The lack of color is also startling. It’s not quite sepia-toned, but it is dominated by shades of drab browns and dark reds. This makes the very rare pop of saturated color (usually present in the hand’s storyline) all the more eye-catching. The colors become less distinct in the background, allowing the ever so slightly more pigmented shades of the characters room to breathe.

I Lost My Body is somewhere between existential horror and character study. Lost is the operative word in the title. The hand has lost its body, and the young man has lost any sense of self. The concept is interesting and I applaud using animation for such a mature theme. It’s just not as developed for the young man’s story as it could be.

Thematically, we’re in very similar territory to Marina de Van’s In My Skin. A young person has become so overwhelmed with the lack of stimulation in their life that they are numb to the sensations of the world and the body. They only begin to rediscover themselves after a shocking disruption in their lives. Part of the problem in I Lost My Body is the young man’s reintegration into normal society happens long before he finds himself, while the young woman in In My Skin is forced to rediscover herself before she finds a path she wants to follow in life. I find the latter much more interesting to engage with than the former.

It’s a balance of expectations that can be tricky to nail in more experimental cinema. How much, if any, character arc is necessary to tell the story you want to tell? Perhaps the reason I find the hand’s story so much more compelling is that it doesn’t change in any real way. It’s very French New Wave in its approach, a slice of life drama told through a bizarre and unsettling adventure that ultimately makes no real change to the status quo.

The animation of the hand is incredibly expressive and filled with life and absurdity. A hand has no way to see anything, yet this hand is animated to treat its knuckles like eyes surveying the land. It moves on its fingertips, darting about like a spider, yet uses those fingertips to feel what’s changing around itself. It’s incredibly strong yet constantly at risk because of its size. The limitations of the hand are established in its first scene (a harrowing escape from a medical lab) and the hand has no way of conveying any promise of wanting a change. We just follow a grotesque figure silently exploring a world for…something.

Comparatively, the young man’s story promises change and fails to deliver. He says he’s not happy and gets to show how disappointed he is in his life. He takes active steps to change based on one interaction with his dream partner in a conversation told through an apartment intercom system. He is trying to find himself, but nothing he does changes the fact that he doesn’t know how to change. By the time anything significant happens to change his life, the film is almost over. It’s a whole lot of build up for a payoff that would usually spur a film’s narrative, not conclude it.

I think a distinct difference in linework could have made a big difference in the effectiveness of I Lost My Body. Imagine if this film kept the same color palette between the two stories. The colors and shadows become the visual language of the film. The super expressive and dangerous world of the hand—shaky, cold, distant, aggressive—could contrast a steadier, cleaner, almost clinical world of numb disappointment for the young man. The initial contrast would create clear lines between the stories and allow for the very different narrative approaches to exist in the same world.

As the stories progressed, the animation could be pushed further. The world could open up more for the young man as he tries to explore and grow, but perhaps could get closer to the shakier linework of the hand for his frustrations as he tries to find himself. The hand could become cleaner, stronger, and more stable as it finds its footing on its quest. For me, that would feel like a more exciting way to connect these stories and create interest for the young man’s Sisyphean quest for self-actualization.

I Lost My Body is not a bad film. The quality of animation is great and the novelty of the hand’s story is worth watching. I just feel like the style of the film doesn’t support both stories as well as it could. The stories are very different in tone and content, but are treated by the film as equal in every way.

I Lost My Body is currently streaming on Netflix.