I Lost My Body Reviews

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it seemed to have a decent reputation, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, I think it’s pretty awesome that, in France, someone could manage to deliver such an edgy surreal and mature animated feature. Sure, the content might be too dark for some viewers but I thought it was actually extremely refreshing. On top of that, even though some might not be impressed by the quality of the animation, I thought it was really cool that they went for some hand-drawn animation. However, what was above all enjoyable was this really surreal story. Indeed, at first, I was wondering how they would tell a whole story over a severed hand and, eventually, it wasn’t really surprising that they would go for some flashback scenes but I was amazed by how efficient it turned out to be. The interesting thing is that this surreal tale was actually taking place in a hyper realistic setting. Indeed, they didn't give us the typical glamor version of Paris but a much more realistic version with some grey landscapes, dirty metros and people being generally unfriendly with each other (the first encounter between Naoufel and Gabrielle was such a fine example and the scene was so pitch-perfect). Eventually, you don’t learn much about Naoufel which could be frustrating but I think you learned enough and this lack of information and context did make his character even more intriguing and it was pretty much the same thing with Gabrielle. Eventually, it has been a while since I have seen such a poetic movie with so many intricate layers. Anyway, to conclude, I really enjoyed the damned thing and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in more experimental animated features or experimental movies in general. 

I Lost My Body is an animated European art film if I’ve ever seen one. Is it good or bad? I’m not entirely sure, but it is very French. Literalizing the main character’s emotional disconnection by crafting the story from his disembodied hand, I Lost My Body is all about its main character’s awakening to life. There’s something to sense and muscle memory, but this presents its biographical tidbits from the perspective of the (eventually) severed hand. It’s both a fascinating and a potentially unnecessarily fussy artistic choice. Same goes with a romantic subplot that eventually leads nowhere in particular. It feels like it’s there to payoff in a bigger way than it does. The woodworking of the main character is first taken up to impress the girl, causes the accident, and then becomes the thing he finds solace and fulfillment in. It’s a confluence of the ways that life can be uncertain by comingling joy with heartache.