‘I Lost My Body’ Review

I Lost My Body (originally titled J’ai perdu mon corps in French) from director/co-writer Jérémy Clapin is quite a trip, especially if you’re like me and know nothing what it’s about. The 80-or-so minutes of runtime is split between following a severed hand and following a young man named Naoufel (Hakim Faris). What it entails is a melancholic and beautifully animated story, however a bit stuck in its own aesthetic.

A real highlight here is Dan Levy’s graceful score which fills much of the space (and there’s a lot of space) between the minimalistic dialogue. Without it, on paper it might be strange just to hear steps of a walking hand (hah). The music does its job perfectly, mid-tempo synth swellings accent the somewhat slow pace of the movie while also hitting the emotional moments with enough elegance. The animation is gorgeous to look at, using a rich color palette to differentiate itself from the bunch.

With this much artistry on the canvas, it often isn’t matched quite as well by the text and material. That’s also the case here as much of the stalker-y love story is filled with subpar dialogue and gives nothing to the viewer in regards to the severed hand situation. There is a big chance that you find yourself more out of the film than immersed in it, thinking about the two different sides of this French coin. I Lost My Body doesn’t hit the homerun as it leaves something to desire about the script and voice acting (I watched it with the French voices).

Smileys: Score, colouring, runtime

Frowneys: Dialogue, voice acting

With a perfect runtime, it flies by both in good and bad.

3.0/5