I Lost My Body

Now that I'm looking back at the movies I watched in 2019, I realized how good this year was for movie buffs! We had fabulous movies like Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Parasite, 1917, Toy Story 4, etc. However, I wasn't that attracted to this animation. I watched it yesterday and honestly, I feel bad for not watching it earlier...

I loved everything about this animation: The Screenplay, the Soundtrack (the songs are truly unique and are masterpieces), the Character Developments, the Flashbacks, and the Romance in it. As I already mentioned, the Soundtracks are beautiful. The track called 'J'ai Perdu Mon Corps' - other songs in the movie have the same style - intensifies the emotions present in every scene that it is played in. The fact that they made the movie in a way that makes you wonder where the 'hand' is going and what really happened is another powerful part of the movie. The rain... the atmosphere... everything is stunning.

I wish there was more at the end. I tried to rationalize what happened. Where would he go? Did he leave her forever? Will he return back to his uncle? Will he ever stand up? What I'm saying is that I did not find a conclusion at the end. It's like finishing the movie before the story actually ends...

The Quotes were amazing too... They make you contemplate at some point... Here are my favorites:
***
Naoufel: Do you believe in fate? No, seriously.

Gabrielle: That everything is written in advance? That we follow a trajectory?

Naoufel: Yeah

Gabrielle: And that we can't change anything?

Naoufel: We think that we can, but we can't. It's an illusion. Unless we do... Something completely unpredictable and irrational. It's the only way to conjure the spell for good.
****************
The Father: I never said it was easy. You can't win every time. That's life.
*****
Naoufel: That it must be peaceful to be cut off from the world like that. To see nothing... hear nothing...

I Lost My Body is a critically acclaimed animated film adapted from Happy Hand by Guillaume Laurant, earning numerous awards including an Oscar nomination and the Nespresso Grand Prize at Cannes. Although animated, it is not suitable for children due to its mature themes and graphic scenes, instead offering a deep, poetic exploration of loss and longing through the surreal journey of a severed hand seeking its owner. With stunning animation, rich symbolism, and dual narratives from both the hand and Naufel, the film presents a complex yet emotionally resonant story, despite a few unanswered plot elements.

Read the full review here: (Indonesian version : alunauwie.com)

Normally I recoil at the thought of a film about a love triangle, but this one works a bit differently. In the best tradition of Hammer meets the "Addams Family", a dismembered hand manages to escape from a laboratory and set across the bustling and perilous city of Paris in the hope that it can be reunited with it's arm. Meantime, "Naoufel" was a pizza boy on his final warning - he tended to be a bit late - when he arrived at the apartment of "Gabrielle". They chatted over her intercom, he tried his best with the temperamental front door and after a few hours took an immediate shine to her. A little investigation revealed that she worked in the local library so he now decided to try and win her affections. What's this all go to do with the disconnected digits, though? Well that becomes increasingly apparent as it fends off peckish rats and pigeons trying to retrace it's steps (or fingerprints) and we learn more of the story of "Naoufel". Though the romance serves as an amiable soft-bed for the story, it's really that of boy and hand that makes this stand out more. It gives us a more creative template to tell his story from his perspective, but also more innovatively, to tell us the hand's story too - all against an emotional, semi-classical and often soloist score that helps to both create tension and diffuse it. There are also quite a few elements from the sub-texts that more subtly connect the hand's disembodiment to the now ordinary aspects of the life of "Naoufel" and allegorically associate the predicaments and opportunities faced by these characters in both positive and negative fashions. I didn't always love the two-dimensional nature of the animation, but once I'd got used to that I saw much more detail from the characterisations assuming almost observational standpoints as their stories play out - sometimes with the bleakness of monochrome and sometimes augmented by some more colourful hues. It takes it's time, that's true, and there are spells when that glacial pace can prove a little frustrating, but I did like the originality of the style of storytelling and it goes to show that plenty of money and endless hours on a keyboard are no substitute for a vivid imagination, a solid story and some hand-crafted drawing.