The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Brian Orndorf December 13, 2014

As eye-rubbing, brain-bleeding moviemaking of the outrageous goes, “The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears” doesn’t really care if the audience is involved in this surreal journey into the internal spaces of murder and madness. It’s a defiant, beret-tilting art house offering that’s meant to be admired by cineastes, not enjoyed by the average joe, with directors Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani creating the picture strictly for their own enjoyment, building a hallucinatory cityscape of insanity one fluttering edit and suggestive image at a time. “The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears” is only appreciable as pure cinematic craftsmanship, and it’s a gorgeous movie, teeming with inventive compositions and feral lighting. However, as a mystery concerning dead bodies and suspicious men, there’s no tractor beam pull to the enigmatic happenings, leaving the effort all about form.

Returning home from a business trip fatigued and eager to settle back into comfort, Dan (Klaus Tange) discovers that his wife is missing. Without overt signs of violence or domestic disappointment, Dan begins to suspect something sinister has occurred inside his apartment. Venturing out into the community to find clues, Dan meets various tenants and strangers, each with an extreme story of their own pertaining to the loss of their spouses. Trying to remain calm while enduring baffling events, Dan instead teases the possibility of insanity, with discoveries and suspicions leading him on a punishing journey of obsession and murder, forcing him out into the open when violent events begin to creep closer to the haggard husband.

The above is only a loose description of “The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears,” and it’s possibly incorrect in many ways. The only true synopsis could come from Cattet and Forzani, who are the keepers of the film’s cabinet of secrets and they’ve swallowed the key, protective of Dan’s bewildering trek into the far reaches of his own mind. It’s been suggested that the effort is an homage to giallo pictures of the 1970s (a subgenre the helmers previously explored in 2009’s “Amer”), and the connections are there, but only in a superficial manner. “The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears” is really its own thing, submitting a missing person plot without any real interest in elaborate procedural particulars to pull the viewer in tightly. In terms of Argento comparisons, if you really want to go there, it’s more “Inferno” than “Deep Red,” content to visit distorted realms of reality instead of following the arc of a traditional whodunit. For many, this revelation will be frustrating, as the directors have no interest in giving the audience what it wants. Their plan is one of intense craftsmanship, establishing Dan as an excuse to venture into visual extremes.

“The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears” takes some getting used to. Armed with macabre cinematography by Manuel Dacosse (a herculean effort that employs a wide range of tricks and tints, emerging as more of a magic act than simple photography) and Edward Scissorhands-style editing by Bernard Beets (equally amazing with its meticulousness), the feature transforms into a blizzard of shots that slip in and out of consciousness. The soundscape is also a ripe melon of moans and screams, supporting the picture’s expedition into sex that touches on kink and violation, always punctuated with some form of hostility to generate the necessary unease that bridges one sequence to the next. What Cattet and Foranzi have created here is wholly impressive, but only from a technical standpoint. It’s elaborate work that submerges the viewer into an alien landscape of nightmares and hallucinations, bursting with hues and a knife-wielding threat, and yes, vaginal imagery. Female genitalia plays an important role in “The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears,” with vaginal-esque artwork, crumbled wall openings, and stab wounds keeping up the unnerving progression of Dan’s investigation into this Christmas-colored psychosexual realm.

The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

With a cinematographic mission to disorientate with blasts of colors, edits, and formats, "The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears" welcomes a Blu-ray release, allowing interested viewers a chance to break down filmmaking tricks and study the pure cinema style. If there's a concern here, it's the presence of crush, which pops up with regularity during the AVC encoded image (2.35:1 aspect ratio) presentation. The effort often employs deep blacks to support mystery, but what's on view here is solid, not dimensional, blocking out screen information in a way that doesn't seem intentional. Revealed in bright lights, and fine detail is quite good, providing a sharp view of facial particulars and horror events, maintaining visits to sensuality and violence. Colors are equally fresh, blasting the screen with a range of stable, significant hues that embellish this nightmare realm. Blood red is a particular standout, and it's viewed often as grisly events are explored. Source material is in fine shape, but there is intentional damage on view to enhance the retro atmosphere.

The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

"The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears" is a movie that seem built primarily for home theater viewing, offering a claustrophobic sound design that emphasizes exaggeration in a manner few pictures show interest in. The 5.1 DTS-HD MA mix is certainly an event, dropping the listener in the middle of this enigmatic environment, with the opening alone detailing crisp twangs of a steel blade, throbbing heartbeats, and the groan of twisted leather. Amazingly, dialogue is preserved to satisfaction, never buried by the intensity of the feature's carnival of atmospherics, with performances registering as intended, goosed with amplified sounds of breathing. Surrounds are fully engaged, creating a circular submersion that magnifies the unease. Scoring is crisp and clean, carrying exact instrumentation. It's an impressive mix, but it truly had to be, as the production is dependent on such immersion for the movie to reach its full potential.

The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• A Theatrical Trailer (1:43, HD) is included.

The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The movie throbs and quakes, and clearly a great deal of time and effort when into its assembly. The precision of the picture is amazing, a credit to the patience of Cattet and Forzani, who put thought into every frame of the work. However, "The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears" isn't something meant to be causally viewed, sure to overwhelm those who don't understand what's about to come. It's specialized cinema maintaining a distinct vision for the mental eradication of its lead character, charging forward with a kaleidoscopic presentation that carries confidently and ghoulishly from beginning to end. Just relax and allow the directors to guide the experience, as any resistance will surely lead to a rejection of the whole endeavor.