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Reviews
J'ai perdu mon corps (2019)
I Lost My Body - Exploration, Loss and Discovery
I Lost My Body (J'ai perdu mon corps) is an excellent 2019 animated film from director Jérémy Clapin which tells a tale of how loss can lead to personal growth and forgiveness.
Reader, please note that this review contains spoilers for the film. You have been warned!
Naoufel's story is told from two perspectives; one in flashbacks, retelling his past, and another from his present. However, what makes I Lost My Body a truly unique viewing experience is that the present storyline is told from the perspective of Naoufel's severed hand.
The film focuses heavily on the theme of loss. Whether this is physical, in the case of Naoufel's hand, or emotional through the loss of his parents, this film expertly shows how someone can lose that which is valuable to them but still grow and become a better person.
Naoufel (Dev Patel) is at a low-point when we meet him. He works in a dead-end pizza delivery job and lives with his emotionally disconnected uncle and crass cousin. However, a fateful meeting over intercom with Gabrielle (Alia Shawkat) changes his life for the better, eventually.
Naoufel very quickly becomes infatuated with Gabrielle, and tracks down her place of work in a pretty stalker-like manner; but I understand that romance often trumps creepiness in cinema, so let's move on.
He eventually follows her to Gigi's (George Wendt) workshop but is caught out by Gabrielle who asks what he is doing there. Naoufel is able to use a nearby apprenticeship advert to explain away his presence.
Despite this apparent last-minute save, he realises that he really does want this opportunity to achieve drive and focus in not just his work, but his life as well.
Gigi's initial reluctance to accept him disappears once he realises that Naoufel is an orphan. This suggests that Gabrielle may have lost her parents too, causing her to be closer with her uncle. It's a small detail in the film, but one that shows someone who has experienced loss helping someone he can sympathise with.
Naoufel's toxic home environment is revealed when he tells his uncle that he is leaving and moving into the apartment provided by the apprenticeship. He is visibly nervous, even scared, to speak to a man who we barely see move. Thankfully, Naoufel makes his escape and begins to work and learn with Gigi in the workshop.
Whilst this storyline is playing out, we are greeted with the beautifully animated 'hand scenes'. The low-down perspective granted by the hand leads to brilliant visual storytelling and a few nail-biting scenes as it traverses across the Parisian landscape.
The best scene (of many) is the stand-off with a pack of rats in the subway station. The hand quickly becomes overwhelmed by rats who see it as their next meal, showing how vulnerable it is.
However, the hand uses a cigarette lighter to fend off the pack. This enables the hand to make its escape on the back of a passing train, after which I audibly breathed a sigh of relief.
There are so many brilliant scenes where the hand makes its way around Paris, desperately searching for Naoufel to reattach itself to; strongly playing into the central theme of loss. The hand is practically running across Paris shouting "I Lost My Body!", and it offers an excellent change of pace from the dialogue-heavy past storyline.
As Naoufel works in with Gigi he becomes closer with Gabrielle. The two of them share a conversation about living in the North Pole, and Naoufel, using his newly gained woodworking skills, constructs the two of them a wooden igloo atop an abandoned skyscraper.
It's a wonderful scene which is sadly cut short when Naoufel reveals who he is by re-delivering the pizza that caused him and Gabrielle to cross paths. Naturally, she is furious and storms off leaving Naoufel in an igloo cold with emotion instead of ice and snow.
Naoufel's decision to tell Gabrielle this way is not the most thought-out plan, and her response is more than reasonable.
Naoufel appears to have an issue with processing loss, and tries to escape his worries by attending a party hosted by his cousin. He drinks excessively to forget the pain, but after starting a fight with a partygoer he is kicked out.
We now find ourselves where a hungover Naoufel chases a fly and ultimately loses his hand to a running bandsaw. It's a toe (and finger) curling scene that brings the story full-circle.
I honestly did not expect Naoufel to survive this ordeal during my first viewing, believing that this film was more of a tragedy than one of hope. Fortunately, Gigi finds him and takes him to hospital which saves his life.
Naoufel has now experienced physical and emotional loss, so retreats into himself and to his room. During this time his hand finally makes it home. However, when it tries to reattach itself, Naoufel turns away, leaving it separated from him, showing that he is trying to move away from his painful past.
Gabrielle eventually visits Naoufel, but finds his room empty so makes her way to the wooden igloo which is now covered in a layer of snow. On the roof she finds an audio recorder Naoufel used a kid.
The recorder symbolically represents Naoufel's shame, regret and inability to move on from the past. As a child he had used it record the sounds around him, but accidentally caused the crash which took the lives of his parents by pointing out the window.
He listened to this harrowing audio earlier in the film; but he now makes the decision to record over it, forgiving himself and moving on.
I love that he wipes away the pain he has carried with him for so many years. What made it especially impactful was that he immediately made the perilous jump across to the crane. He pushes himself to change his destiny, alter fate and chart his own course in life - no longer tied down by his past.
I am happy to say that I Lost My Body has seen a great deal of recognition. It received a nomination at the Academy Awards for Best Animated Picture, and saw victory at several other awards nights.
I was also surprised to find out that this film is actually based off a book; Happy Hand (Cadre Rouge) by Guillaume Laurant. I might look for an English-translated edition to see how it measures up.
This is a truly unique film that uses the outlandish tale of a severed hand travelling across Paris to illustrate that through loss we can all grow, move on and improve as people.
La nuit a dévoré le monde (2018)
Superb Indie Horror
With a focus on setting, atmosphere and character, The Night Eats The World (La Nuit A Dévoré Le Monde) is a superb 2018 French horror which has a lot to offer as it explores new elements of this familiar genre.
The film follows Sam (Anders Danielsen Lie), a musician who attends a party at his ex-girlfriend's apartment to pick up some of his old tapes. Locking himself away in a room before passing out due to a nosebleed inadvertently saves his life as he awakens the next morning to discover the aftermath of a bloody struggle that claimed the lives of everyone in not only the apartment, but apparently the whole of Paris too.
From here the film strays from the well-trodden path of the main character(s) receiving news of a survivor camp, military base or other end-goal which the plot focuses on. Instead, The Night Eats The World explores the effects of isolation whilst trying to survive the apocalypse, an element rarely featured in this popular genre.
I get frustrated with characters making numerous crucial mistakes during their first few nights of the apocalypse,. What sets this film apart from them is that Sam's approach in surviving is initially very methodical, and that it is only later in the story that he begins to make mistakes.
Sam's initiative is demonstrated when a family trying to escape from another building draws out the undead occupants of Sam's apartment complex, which allows him to secure his base. He does warn the family to stay inside, but does not try and get them inside his building which would certainly be the course of action taken in other films.
From here, Sam checks each apartment one at a time for food and resources, using keys found in the managers office. However, one flat is still occupied, causing Sam to have a close escape from a zombified family before marking it as unsafe with a chalk cross on the door.
Speaking of the zombies in the film, there is an interesting design choice so they don't make any noise. Your standard zombie flick will use noises ranging from the classic groaning and moaning from Day of the Dead, to the rabid inhuman shrieks in 28 Days Later. However, the zombies here are eerily silent, only making noises when moving or biting at unlucky survivors. It's a great example of less being more, and it certainly made them creepier.
Whilst clearing the building, Sam discovers Alfred (Denis Lavant, pictured above), a resident who died and returned whilst stuck in a lift. He becomes Sam's only company, providing him with one-sided conversations throughout the film, filling in as an undead version of Wilson from Castaway.
The focus is then taken away from surviving in terms of food, drink and shelter, and instead looks more at how a man can stay sane whilst living alone, trapped in a building.
Sam keeps his home tidy, organises and rations his food. He exercises in great scene where we follow Sam jogging throughout the house whilst listening to music, but there are also several standout scenes where Sam is actually playing music.
During his clear-out of the apartment block, Sam discovers a teenager's room with music equipment and a drum kit. Later in the film, we're treated to a few drumming sessions and two live-looping sessions.
Live-looping is where tracks are played live and then looped over each other to slowly create a song. I really enjoyed both scenes as they provided a welcome change of pace in the film, and were something I did not expect to see before watching. The second one has Sam and Sarah (another survivor introduced in the second act) performing one of these live-loops, and I think it's superb.
The aforementioned drumming scenes are just as great, and it serves as an outlet for Sam to vent his frustrations through music. I looked his actor up, and it turns out he's released a decent album, This Is Autism, in 2011.
As the film progresses, Sam's mental state declines, he argues with Alfred and becomes frustrated that all the undead have abandoned them both. Any sane survivor would be glad to not have the undead gathering outside, but this only makes Sam's isolation worse which drives him to do a pretty amazing drum solo which brings zombies from all around to his apartment. He hangs out the window, maniacally banging a drum to his hungry audience below who terrifyingly almost reach his window.
With the horde still trying to break in, Sam is awoken late at night by the sound of footsteps rapidly approaching his bedroom door, replicating a nightmare he had earlier in the film which ended with him being eaten alive. He instinctively grabs his shotgun and fires through the door into not a zombie, but another survivor. Overcoming the initial shock at what he'd done, Sam works to save the woman's life.
She later recovers and reveals her name is Sarah (Golshifteh Farahani, pictured above). She says that she's been surviving by using her grappling hook to swing from roof to roof as the undead don't do well with heights apparently (which would make the Eiffel Tower a good base come to think of it). The two of them live together for what seems like a few weeks and Sam finally has the company he needs, but as their food stores begin to dwindle, he and Sarah face a difficult decision of moving to another building in order to survive.
Sam is against this idea, wanting to stay put even with the mass of zombies outside he attracted, which Sarah points out will soon break through the doors. Burying his head in the sand, Sam instead tackles the flat he marked as unsafe in the first act and recovers additional supplies to keep them going.
However, when he returns to Sarah's room, he finds her long dead, having never recovered from Sam's shotgun blast. Their time together was nothing more than Sam hallucinating, which was an unexpected and well-executed narrative decision.
Thinking back on the discussions the two of them had, Sarah appears to be the manifestation of Sam's logical part of the brain, desperately arguing with himself to survive rather than die like everyone else.
Sam eulogises Sarah, covering her body with a sheet and placing candles and her personal effects around her. From here he realises that whilst his conversations with Sarah may have been a hallucination, he does need to leave as his food will run out and the horde will get inside soon.
After preparing a travel bag, and getting Sarah's grappling hook in order to swing across to a neighbouring building, Sam burns the tapes he came to collect right at the start of the film, severing his connection to the building he's called home. He also frees Alfred from the lift and returns him to his flat.
However, before Sam can make his swift exit, the burning tapes set off a fire alarm, enraging the horde outside who break through. In the ensuing chaos, they storm up the stairs almost getting Sam who quickly confines himself to the lift he just freed Alfred from.
Narrowly avoiding the hands reaching out to him, Sam eventually makes it to the roof by climbing the lift shaft and navigating through rooms filled with the undead and smoke from his burning tapes. With a zombie hot on his heels, he swings to safety on a nearby building. Slowly pulling himself to the roof, Sam looks out on the Parisian skyline, facing his next challenge in surviving.
The decision to end on this positive note shows Sam's triumph over his own mind, breaking from comfort and safety in order to survive. It might have taken him hallucinating a woman he killed to convince him to take this quite literal leap of faith, but he made it there in the end.
To summarise, The Night Eats The World is a superb film not just about battling for survival, but battling within your own head to keep your head above water and not letting yourself drown.