After a business trip, a man returns to his swanky pad only to find his wife has gone missing. As he searches for her, he's drawn into the phantasmagorical world of sex and violence hiding behind the doors and walls of the apartment building.
Sort of. I think?
Writers/directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani aren't particularly interested in telling a coherent story or giving you oodles of plot; rather, they've distilled the ideas of the Italian giallo down so much that it's little more than visuals and vibes. (Yes, somehow The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears has less story than your average Argento flick.) Events unfold in an endless array of disorienting angles, stark colors, and odd compositions. While every frame is undeniably a work of art, the assault on your senses becomes too much on occasion–perhaps it's too much of a good thing. The repetition of scenes and shots–even when time isn't literally folding in on itself–might be too much for viewers who wish Cattet and Forzani would just get on with it already.
This lite-on-plot approach means you can assign whatever meaning you want to the film and it works. Maybe it's just about the black-gloved killer lurking in the building. It could be about voyeurism, about the perils of looking in places you weren't meant to see. Or maybe it deals with the pains and pleasures of love and romance.
I found it to be a statement about the fear of women's sexuality, about what happens when women truly take control of their own bodies and sexual agency. One character deals with the banality of married sex by lying still, eyes closed, as her husband silently humps away on top of her. Another discovers what she truly wants and flees. Yet another masturbates her way into mortal danger, and then out of it again as she releases both monsters and protectors. There is a fear of liberation and sexual freedom, and a desire for them. And lawd a-mighty, there are vaginas everywhere. I know, I know–you think I'm being a little too "that song from the Tootsie Roll commercial" about it ("Whatever it is I think I see...becomes a va-gin-a to me!"), but come on now. They're everywhere, from wounds (your body's "tears"–that's \'ters\–indeed) to wallpapers. It is the Where's Waldo of female anatomy. Have a small sample:
As I said, for you, The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears may be something else entirely, and that's what's so remarkable and frustrating about the film. Maybe it means nothing! Maybe it's just a bloodied-up fever dream by way of David Lynch, Dario Argento, and Roman Polanski's The Tenant. There's a sort of...hmm, in the interest of not spoiling it, let's call it a nesting dolls made real sequence that for my money is nothing short of brilliant. It's gruesome and nightmarish and one of the finest scenes in modern horror. Still, this film is absolutely not going to work for everyone, so if you don't have the patience for "arty nonsense" or you enjoy, you know, coherence, then buyer beware. Maybe it is just pretty piffle...but I couldn't take my eyes off of it.
It's a frustrating film at times, but I liked it a lot. One thing I really enjoyed was that there was something of an anthology feel to it, all these mini giallos (gialli?) nested inside the larger story. I liked some of those mini stories better than the larger one, actually!
ReplyDeleteAs for the plot itself, I think the landlord was the killer. Someone else I know thinks the first man we saw disappear, the husband of the bored older woman you mentioned, was actually the killer. Who do you think it was?
Agree with everything you said about the "anthology" feel. The way it jumped around and wove time and space together was terrific.
ReplyDeleteOh man, who is the killer...both of those suggestions work well! I kind of like the idea of the husband...who is either driven to kill because of the voices (when he disappears) or the voices are the dead haunting him? Not sure if either of those theories would check out, but it certainly would make a re-watch worth it.
I got the anthology feel too, as if each neighbor's story was its own little giallo. This was lovely, and I genuinely liked a great deal of it, but i started to lose patience about halfway through. I also literally said out loud at one point "oh, so that *did* actually happen," which is basically the "that's it, that's the movie" of every giallo I've ever seen.
ReplyDeleteMan, there's nearly as much vaginal imagery in this movie as in the average Guillermo Del Toro film.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe I'd never noticed the tears/tears heteronym thang. Although given that the original French title doesn't have that ambiguity, I wonder if it's relevant. I hope it is.
ReplyDeleteI thought about that, that the French translation wouldn't make it work...but it's so perfect. I mean, all that slashing and all those vaginas...it's a terrific coincidence!
ReplyDeleteThe real killer was the bloody Senor Wences with the straight razor. Having already seen the movie (and really liked it) I don't mind the spoiler but you should try and be more careful with your lead images in the future. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteS'alright? S'alright.
ReplyDeleteSo i'm guessing the whole movie basically takes place inside Dan's Brain and he's a Schizoid multiple personality case. The " house" with all the different apartments/ mini giallo's are basically those parts of his brain he has sealed of from reality and accountability. Remember his own apartment is locked from the inside.
ReplyDeleteThe other main male characters correspond to some Freudian part of his psyche...The Euro-dubbed Inspector Venticelli being the controlling the superego that has to bring these wilder split parts of Dan' mind together and face the truth. The landlord/owner of the building/Dan's brain has the book containing all the names of the(missing?) girls.
A lot of the characters are spying on each other, from hidden camera's two way mirror/ holes in the ceiling (the older woman discovering her husband became a monster in the ceiling?) Dan being chased by himself and the real Dan wanting to claw out of Dan's own skin. The starting trauma of Dan as a boy witnessing vaginal blood dripping (the Strange tears)is a bit pat in my opinion, but at the same time, oddly poetic explanation for the psycho-sexual aberation that i surmise lead to Dan playing lots of kinky, bloody games with his ladies.