L'Étrange Couleur des Larmes de ton Corps

The Strange Colour of your Body's Tears

Belgium/France/Luxembourg 2013
produced by
Francois Cognard, Eve Commenge for Anonymes Films, Tobina Films
directed by Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani
starring Klaus Tange, Ursula Bedena, Joe Koener, Birgit Yew, Hans de Munter, Anna D'Annunzio, Jean-Michel Vovk, Manon Beuchot, Romain Roll, Lolita Oosterlynck, Delphine Brual, Sam Louwyck, Sylvia Camarda, Ann de Visscher, Michael Fromowicz, Alexandre Hornbeck, Francois Cognard, Manon Kaefer, Aline Stevens, Julien Bonischo, Anna Katina, Elsebeth Steentoft, Damiano Morocutti, Lucas Salhani
written by Bruno Forzani, Hélène Cattet, special makeup effects by David Scherer, visual effects by Daniel Bruylandt

review by
Mike Haberfelner

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Arriving home from a business trip to Germany, Dan (Klaus Tange) finds his wife Edwige gone from his apartment - which is more or less impossible, since the apartment has been locked by a doorchain from the inside. After a bit of musing and coming to no conclusion, slight desperation sets in and Dan tries to question the neighbours, his landlord and the like - but he's met with closed doors until an old women living on the seventh floor tells him how things got strange in her apartment until her husband disappeared into the ceiling. The woman then chases Dan out of the apartment though, and he finds refuge on the roof - with a naked woman smoking as if it was the most natural thing in the world and trying to throw him off the roof - but Dan wakes up in his own bed, awakened from the buzzer ... it's a police detective who claims Dan has called him the other day (Dan can't remember) who tells Dan he will start investigations, but instead seems to only be reminiscing about an old case of his - which might have more to do with Edwige's disappearance than apparent at first sight ...

Eventually, Dan wakes up next to Edwige's severed head, and there's a hole in the head. The head however seems to appear and disappear rather at will - to a point where Dan has to doubt it's real even.

Dan wakes up to the buzzer again, but now it's him on the outside, who eventually breaks into the apartment to (maybe) intending to kill Dan on the inside ...

A neighbour, who's obviously trapped in the apartment walls, tells Dan how interconnected the apartments actually are without anyone knowing, but there's a killer after Dan who might know about this, too. Again and again, Dan tries to call above-mentioned police inspector, but he never seems in but does show up at the least opportune moments.

Dan tries to piece together memories about the hole in Edwige's head, but his memories amount to pretty much everyone (including himself) in the story getting his or her head bust open but Edwige. So what is real and what is fiction?

The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears is basically an hommage to the giallo of old (also mirrored in the film's music borrowed from those films) - the high end, Dario Argento-style-over-content sort of giallo - but done the David Lynch-way, meaning the movie remains intentionally mysterious, does not try to explain everything away, suspends narrative reason on full purpose, and the like. As a result, we are left with a few wonderful setpieces, some poetic outbursts of violence, beautiful camerawork ... and not all that much else, as this movie tries to be weird for weirdness sake a bit too hard. Basically, where David Lynch has a vision behind all of his absurdities, and usually does follow a narrative arc, The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears after a promising start seems to abandon storytelling altogether and then loses its audience in the process. This could have almost worked even, would the film have been half an hour shorter, it could have left the audience puzzled - but towards the end, the movie just becomes repetitive and seems to hammer its points home again and again, until one doesn't care anymore.

Pity, the film showed promise ... but refused to keep it in the long run.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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