I Lost My Body (2019)

I Lost My Body is a 2019 film by Jérémy Clapin. It is classified as a “fantasy/adventure” movie because the details of the story involve a severed hand attempting to return to the body it belongs to. A shocking choice of content, it would seem, but the movie is delightfully sweet, as this brave little hand fights to get back to its owner, a man named Naoufel. On its adventure, it reminisces on Naoufel’s childhood and his growth as a young man, as he fights for the affections of a girl named Gabrielle. The movie is funny, endearing, sometimes slightly frightening, but is ultimately a story about growth and grief, and what one does to accept one and process the other. What sets it apart, in my opinion, is the unique use of animation as a storytelling device, the hidden color theory, the interesting love story, and the movie’s ultimate ending and the implications therein.

Animation is a media form that has been seen in the past as childish or age-limited. Movies produced in the US by companies like Universal and Disney have aided this stereotype that animation is for children. Meanwhile, creators like Tim Burton, Wes Anderson, and Martin Rosen use this medium of art to convey deeper, not always child-friendly concepts. For example, Martin Rosen was the creator, director, and producer of Watership Down (1978), based on the 1972 novel of the same name written by Richard Adams. Upon first viewing the cover of this book or DVD (or possibly VHS, it’s old enough), you’re greeted with a group of Beatrix Potter-esque rabbits. The story these rabbits guide the watcher though, however, is that of Cold War paranoia and Orwellian allegories. The film itself is, in fact, an allegory for the “struggles between tyranny and freedom, reason and blind emotion, and the individual and the corporate state”, according to Rosen. The animation is realistic to the point of speaking rabbits in the countryside, but the body horror and animalistic aspects of these rabbits is also realistic. I have a memory of watching this at the ripe age of four, before my father realized the animated rabbits on the DVD case from the library were nothing like Peter Rabbit. Works by Anderson (such as the controversial stop motion film Isle of Dogs) and most of Tim Burton’s work echo this as well; that animation is a valuable tool in the field of storytelling.

With most animated films, in pre-production there will be both a presentation of a storyboard and also tools that align with that, such as software types, tentative cast descriptions, and a color palette. This is my favorite part of the process, because color theory is something that interests me a lot. Color is as much an important piece of storytelling as any part of a tale, and without a good choice of a theme, a really good film can unfortunately fall short of its desired effect. In I Lost My Body, there are childhood flashback scenes in grayish sepia tones, setting the tone of perhaps a home video VHS tape. In the recent history, not in the far past and when Naoufel, our main character, still had his hand, the colors are soft and comforting, with deeper pastel colors and hazy lighting. Similarly, when his hand is attempting to return to it’s body, the colors remain soft, but now appear almost muted, not just pastel. One thing that changes up the gentle color choices in I Lost My Body is blood. From the soft light and soothing neutrals springs a sharp, angry red when blood is spilled. This harsh switch is both visually different and mentally stimulating. In most palettes, there is a gradient that leads to bolder colors, but in this case, the quick flashes of red boost the film’s impact. As the viewer’s eyes have gotten used to the base colors through the film, these red scenes cause our eyes to readjust to take in the information presented, drawing us further into the movie. 

The love story in I Lost My Body is one that could be considered controversial. When Naoufel first meets Gabrielle, it is to deliver a pizza, late and wet from a bike ride in the rain. He’s unable to enter the building, and so he calls up to her flat and tries to explain the situation, leading to a long talk through the intercom, until Naoufel ultimately leaves with her memory on his mind. He is infatuated with the gentle kindness he was shown, and through escapades that could be considered trials and tribulations, he ends up on the roof of an abandoned building with her, with pizza on the way and an igloo built, just for her. In my opinion, this is a beautiful love story, a collection of small gestures and silent “I love you”s from a boy full of love, and a girl deserving of all he has. The way Naoufel loves Gabrielle so quietly was at first a little off-putting, due to its stalkerish tendencies, but there’s an innocence his character has that balances it out. I love this relationship, so when the end of the story came along and it seemed like they would never be, I was very upset. I feel that I connected with Naoufel on this level because there's a common theme in most western movies with protagonists who are oblivious to displays of affection until the end. These always infuriate me, and I think it’s because I don’t consider myself a main character. I see myself as a side character who might just be in love with the main character, the yearner, never the yearned. Naoufel, our main character, has this love story playing out with him at the center, and it’s refreshing to see this trope. 

The story’s contents are wonderful, a quirky tale about a hand and its body and their journey through life. But what really caught my attention was the ending. It is left relatively ambiguous, with Gabrielle standing on the edge of a building holding Naoufel’s recorder. She stands in front of the igloo he had built her, and looks out over a snow-covered Paris. From what she can gather on the final tape, he has jumped from the edge of the building to the crane’s standing platform nearby, cheating fate. We don’t know if they meet again, where Naoufel is, or if Gabrielle’s idea of what happened is wishful thinking. The scene has such perfect writing. It begins with silence, a staticy sound as Naoufel swings the microphone around absentmindedly. We know that in that full silence, there were a lot of thoughts. He’s recording over the tap that held his parent’s final moments, essentially rewriting a story he hated. Then the sound of feet hitting the roof are heard as he jumps from the edge backwards, to safety. He places the recording device down on the ground, leaving it on. Taking a board from behind him, the sound of it hits the edge of the building, running is heard, and Naoufel jumps, but jumps to the crane’s platform. For the sake of this paper, Naoufel is alive, and the story as it is told to us is true to events. One thing is certain, Naoufel went onto the roof with the intent to die. We don’t know exactly when he changed his mind, if it was the jump back to safety before putting down the recorder, the placement of the board in the direction of the crane, or even when he started running to the edge, but we know he changed it, and it gives us room to decide when that was, to choose our own destiny, just like he chose his.

I Lost My Body is a story about love in loss in more than one way. We have the obvious ones, such as the love between Naoufel and Gabrielle, as well as the literal loss of the hand and the nearly implied loss of Naoufel himself. There are, however, more opaque aspects, such as the love of Naoufel’s parents towards him and Gabrielle’s uncle towards her. Loss is also a loss of innocence, and the characters themselves choosing to let go of grief, a form of loss in many senses of the word. Nauofel’s final documented moments in the movie come from his most prized childhood possession; the tape recorder. Not only that, it’s the tape he was listening to in the darkness of his room, the one that held his parent’s last moments. He records over it and leaves it behind, the way his hand sits back, holding his old memories of pain and the past, and lets him go on to a brighter future where he’s the captain of his own ship. I liked this movie because of all the many ways one can view it and interpret it. There’s no incorrect way to watch I Lost My Body, just like there’s no inherently “incorrect” way to live your own life. This movie reminds the viewer that they have a destiny, and it’s one that’s not something you have to follow a straight line to fulfill.