The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears (2013) – Review

Quick Breakdown

  • Visuals: colour, angles, camera direction stand out – 4/5
  • Mental Depth: emotional layering and artistic intention – 3/5
  • Story: flat but not confusing – 2.5/5
  • Weirdness: dreamlike, body horror, abstract – 4/5
  • Culture: giallo-adjacent introduction, French tone – 3/5
  • Final Vibe: "I watched it once" – 3/5

Excerpt

After finishing this film I struggled to write a straight review. Taken some time to process a little. Yes, it was interesting. It was a tad boring. I didn’t dislike it. I wanted to like it. It had good themes, good ideals, good tropes, good colour, amazing camera direction. The film felt quite flat. Was nice and confusing and had some good body gore kind of things in it. A good push at artistic madness. Like many of the films in this weird trope, it wasn’t an engaging dopamine rush. Difficult to review.

Film Information

Director:
Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani
Country of Origin:
France, Belgium, Luxembourg
Language:
French
Length:
102 minutes

First Impressions

First thing that hits you is colour, sound, camera rotations, odd time. Definitely all of this. And as an art piece, it gets better with time and exaggerates clearly on colour and camera and sound.

Tone & Style

Intense, slow, French. Erotic maybe, not erotic, challenging. But yeah—erotic. Weirdly relatable in some ways. Definitely playful time. Not the most interesting watch in terms of modern films, but definitely starting to challenge things. None of the films here are designed to be action-heavy though—more thought pieces, art. I like it.

Experience

50 minutes felt like a weird dream. Body horror dream. Quickly escalates. Like a drug. Emotions come to the forefront—lust and murder circle around each other. Sound was used over-intentionally—placed like art or theatre rather than realism. It’s a very quiet film in terms of words. Contained. The lack of dialogue allowed it to communicate ideas better.

Engagement

I turned it off a few times to go and do bits and came back to it. It doesn’t grip you—but I think you’re supposed to “suffer” a little through some sections—and that’s part of the point. I wouldn’t watch it again. Once was enough. The ending closed it a bit. It wasn’t too ambiguous. I wouldn’t file it under “glad I watched it once,” more like: I watched it once. If someone asked if they should watch it—I wouldn’t not recommend it, but it wouldn’t be the first one I’d suggest. That said, I’ve enjoyed the fact I’ve seen it.

Emotion, Violence, and Lust

The film did a really good job of blending strong emotions—violence and lust like oil and water—so that it wasn’t an easy solution. It didn’t feel like it was simplifying anything. You had to sit in the discomfort of it.

On Giallo

I don’t know enough about giallo to say for sure, but I wouldn’t say the film was mocking it—or maybe it was, and I didn’t notice. Taken at surface level, it felt like a serious try to tell the story it set out to do, not a parody or a joke.

Realising it was made in 2013—not pre-90s—almost changes how you see it. It’s not from the era it evokes. It’s deliberately stylised, a modern homage to a more artistic scene of creators from an earlier time.

Final Thought

A French dream that’s a tad too real.