The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears (2013)

Very well executed

Too much of everything

Sick Product of a Sick System

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

The film is loaded and overloaded with visual ideas. Two directors, perhaps too many ideas? Or too little story or interest in telling a story. There is very little talk in the film so don't let the fact that it's subtitled distract you as everything else will eventually.It has a David Lynch vibe to it at times in both a good and bad way though this is hyper paced rather the leaden though strangely it eventually proves to be going nowhere fast.Though it's easy to say the film is beautiful looking--it borrows heavily from several films in particular that fans will know. The thing is though the photography doesn't make the people look good--they all seem wrinkled and loaded with bumps and warts that the way the film is shot emphasizes, is this on purpose? Hard to say but the film's interest isn't exactly in people so it may just be an oversight, or some jacked up director idea to make everyone non-glamorous.There is a story at least suggested here in the first half hour but the movie is overlong and has a number of repeated little visual gags. almost like a highlight reel---as it to say, hey we really thought this one scene we did five minutes ago was cool, what if we show it to you again. And fast cutting gets just as boring as no cutting when the same style is used to edit every scene. The movie repeats it's best bits so much you start to hate them.Then it has a final baffling ten minutes--that feels like 20--that really make no sense whatsoever. You lose all sense of who any of the characters are by that point, you won't even know who's story it is by then.Use of authentic Giallo music is effective--and mostly used as source music--I guess the character's like to listen to Giallo music as you seen them start LP's at a number of points.It's a movie that doesn't know when to quit doing anything, it's almost like scenes cut out off a "real" giallo film or alternate edits.Of interest or distraction is the overuse of extreme close ups and split screen. if you're interested in unusual styles or shooting this will be of interest and show what works and what sure doesn't.If you're just a gore and giallo exploitation fan you'll likely get pissed off multiple times. A film worth a look but not really worth watching all of. What you'd call an interesting failure.

The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears is a tribute to Italian Giallo slasher films of the 60s and 70s. The film begins with a man returning to his apartment after he has been away on business for two weeks, only to find that his wife is missing. The man then tries to find his wife. He searches through her stuff calls, the police, and visits a mysterious lady up on the seventh floor of his building. But things take a turn for the worse when he discovers something that has mysteriously appeared in his apartment. The film then becomes a disjointed serious of dream sequences and flashbacks that become increasingly hard to follow. The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears is second film by the Italian horror duo, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Frozani. And let me just say that these two know what they're doing, the film is very well crafted, the blocking and camera work in this is some of the freshest I've seen in any film from the past few years. The cinematography (shot by Manuel Dacosse) is fantastic. The film is vibrantly colorful, has flawless lighting, and does a great job of getting you up close and personal with the characters in the film. The sound design is also insanely good. There's little dialogue in the film, (we get most of the information about the characters through what we see.) but the void the absence of dialogue has made is filled with some of the most detailed and complex sound design I've heard in a horror film. But where The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears succeeds in style, it fails in story. With all of its jumping around, cryptic storytelling, and dream sequences it becomes nearly impossible to follow, (at least towards the end.) and thus the film fails to engage its audience. The story in itself wasn't that great to start with, and they never really add anything onto it, if anything they take away from where the story started by making it so confusing and to make it worse they don't do much to try and make you follow their film. Their are aspects of the story that are really good, (like the back story of the lady on the seventh floor.) but on a whole the story is alright at best, and a muddled mess at worst. While not bad a bad film, The Strange Color of Your Bodies Tears could have been much better than it actually was. Hélène Cattet and Bruno Frozani both definitely have talent, they just need to work on focusing in on a single theme or story, and making it coherent. If they are able to do these two things the film they make will almost definitely be a masterpiece. But for now I'm satisfied with The Strange Color of Your Bodies Tears.5.9

Since I saw this one in a cinema (and sat in the middle otherwise I would have left) I had not only to endure the chaotic and annoyingly bad script. I also had to suffer from the annoying sound effects/music at quite a high volume which I think is on purpose. I also had to endure the chaotic visuals which seems to have been made by randomly using different effects to make it "arty".When leaving the cinema I had the feeling I never ever wanted to see another movie again. Now after a good nights sleep I mustered the energy to try to share this horrible experience to help people avoid this "movie", which might be THE worst movie experience I have ever had, but I settle with saying that it is among the worst, even though I cannot recall any worse that I have had.Avoid it.

Unfortunately, I absolutely hate films that are all style over substance. I find them tedious, a chore to sit through and the polar opposite of entertaining. THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS, a tribute of sorts to the Italian gialli of the 1970s and in particular the work of Dario Argento, is one such film and something I really struggled to sit through.The basic plot sees a husband searching for his missing wife in his apartment complex, and there's literally nothing more to it than that. The filmmakers use this as an excuse to fit together dozens of arty shots of people being sliced, stabbed and some more surreal set-pieces. There's an unpleasant sexual side to the proceedings at times while in other places it's frankly dull.The cast is nothing to write home about but the film is indeed beautiful to look at; the camera-work is very good and sometimes stunning, but I always find the look of a film comes second to the plotting which is why I couldn't enjoy this. If these arty bits had been interspersed with a more solid narrative and some real storytelling then I might have liked this; as it stands, I hated it. Your mileage may vary.