OSCARS 2020: I Lost My Body (2019)

Watching Netflix grow from a humble by-mail rental service to a billion dollar corporation can't help but be somewhat disheartening. Netflix could've been the greatest video store in the world, with a selection far deeper than any physical location could ever match. Instead, it decided to become television instead, focusing on original programming for its streaming division. Yet the affect Netflix has had on the industry is undeniable. Look no further than 2020's Oscars, where Netflix has two Best Picture contenders in the race and another film taking up slots in the acting section. Netflix has even crept its way into the Animated Feature category, where it has two films competing: Holiday cartoon “Klaus” and oddball French co-production “I Lost My Body.” The film previously won the Critics' Week Grand Prize at Cannes, the first animated film to do so.

“I Lost My Body” follows two parallel story lines, the connection between them not being immediately apparent. A disembodied hand springs to life and escapes from a laboratory. It crawls around Paris, having small adventures of its own, seemingly in search of the body it was detached from. Meanwhile, an awkward college student named Naoufel bails out of his job as a pizza delivery boy... But not before having a conversation with a beguiling female customer. Smitten, he tracks the girl down and takes a job as an apprentice with her uncle, a carpenter. All the while, he juggles unnerving memories from his childhood.

The crawling hand is a cinematic troupe with a history onto itself, one I've written a little bit about in the past. It seems the image of a hand, freed of its body and creeping around like a spider, is irresistible to many filmmakers. Yet “I Lost My Body” isn't going for horror. In fact, it frequently asks the audience to relate to the self-motivated limb. The most compelling moments of the film tracks the hand, at ground level, as it navigates the rough Parisian cityscape. It fights off rats in the subway, is trapped under an iced-over stream, nearly gets eaten by a dog, startles a blind man, is attacked by fire ants, and eventually catches a whirling ride on a wind-blown umbrella. It's all fascinating to watch the world from the perspective of something so small and vulnerable. The hand is expressively brought to life, such as when it dons a tin can a hermit crab's shell.

While the creeping hand stuff is pretty cool, the romance at the center of “I Lost My Body's” other story is less compelling. The impetus for Naoufel and Gabrielle's romance is interesting, the two have a philosophical conversation over an intercom. While I relate to the awkwardness he feels, the way he goes about tracking her down is not very effective. He essentially stalks her for a bit and then duplicitously integrates himself into her life. When he reveals this information, he becomes upset that she's angry rather than charmed. He probably should've seen that one coming. Though the film attempts to beef up the protagonist's inner life with various flashbacks to his childhood, it only goes so far in making Naoufel a genuinely interesting character. I do like the way the meaning behind various reoccurring symbols – an astronaut, a mountain goat – are revealed.

As an animated film, “I Lost My Body” seesaws between gorgeous and oddly awkward. The sequences devoted to the hand's adventures are lovingly detailed. The movement of the creeping hand is fluid and its encounters with various animals are vividly rendered. The flight-via-umbrella scene is truly impressive. Yet the animation for the human-centric scenes can be surprisingly jerky at times, the characters moving stiffly. The character designs are also fairly realistic, making the long dialogue scenes not very interesting to look at. The film does make excellent use of color, I'll give it that.

Once the twist in how the story threads connect is reveal, “I Lost My Body” peters out in a disappointing way. It's ending is seriously abrupt. Netflix pulled together a cast of well-known American actors for its English dub. Alia Shawkat and George Wendt sound kind of bored though, with only Dev Patel really committed to the performance. While it has a cool premise, and is occasionally gorgeously animated, “I Lost My Body” didn't work as well for me as it did for others. I couldn't help but left wondering if whatever GKIDS had lined up for the Oscars this year would've been more interesting, if Netflix hadn't pushed them out of the race. [7/10]