Mark Reviews Movies: I LOST MY BODY

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 28, 2019

The only way to describe the strange but engrossing I Lost My Body is to cut to the chase: A severed hand travels across a city in an attempt to reunite with the body to which it was once attached. Meanwhile, scenes of the life of the young man who once had the hand are intercut with the hand's adventures, leading up to a weird confluence of coincidences that result in the hand being detached from the body.

The young man is Naofel (voice of Hakim Faris), whose story begins on the floor of the workshop, where blood is pooling as a disinterested fly evades the red puddle. All of this makes some sense eventually, because we see Naofel from his infancy, through his childhood, and until he goes to some lengths to attract the attention of Gabrielle (voice of Victoire Du Bois), a mysterious woman whose sensitive voice on the other end of an intercom gets Naofel, a pizza delivery guy, to re-think the course of his life.

That story, which involves childhood tragedy and plenty of unfulfilled dreams, isn't nearly as interesting as the tale of the hand. Co-writer/director Jérémy Clapin clearly recognizes this, and most of the flashbacks are focused Naofel's right hand at various stages of his life, doing assorted things—riding a bike, playing the piano, recording the world with a tape deck.

There's a certain tender nostalgia to these scenes as a result. How often do any of us really think of how vital a role any of our appendages actually play in our daily existence or in the milestones of our lives? You don't really know what you have until it's gone.

As for those adventures, they're surprisingly thrilling in their mundanity. The hand has to get from a refrigerator in a hospital to the apartment above a workshop where Naofel currently lives, encountering various perils along the way.

I Lost My Body is an animated film, because there is no other way to present this story without it looking incredibly silly. Clapin and his artists use clear lines and naturalistic colors that give the hand, the characters, the animals, and the locales a level of believability. They animate the hand with a sense of weight and a distinct personality that make the detached appendage—if you can believe it—a sympathetic character.

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