J'ai perdu mon corps/I Lost My Body (2019)

Yes this is the story of a disembodied hand searching through the world, in the style of Thing from The Addams Family, for the rest of its body. But that in itself isn't enough to to describe what this story is. It is a romance, or the longing for one, and the realization of loss of one, and it is one of the mostly lovely sad movies I've ever seen.

The animation style in J'ai perdu mon corps is anime-esque but finds its own style and beauty. There are moments of the grotesque, rendered here in quite manageable moments, but mostly the film is a series of the mundane. And it is in that balance J'ai perdu mon corps finds its beauty. This is one of the reasons I am drawn to animation, its ability to bring forward stories that live action cannot capture. For an example of this see any of Disney's "live action" remakes of their animated classics, which almost entirely miss the point. J'ai perdu mon corps is the sort of film that needs to be told through drawing, and is all the more beautiful for it.

We don't get many mainstream features in 2D hand drawn animation these days so it is always refreshing to come across one. However, as much as it's animation is gorgeous and a real draw for making this film so damn impactful, the real strength of J'ai perdu mon corps is its beautiful melancholy story, told so eloquently and so painfully. In the English dub Dev Patel and Alia Shawkat come together in such a beautifully mismatched way, their feelings running over and through the drawings to make one of the most believable missed opportunities of the year.

J'ai perdu mon corps is a treat for being nothing like anything else you've seen this year. And that in itself is such a strength in this time.

J'ai perdu mon corps
Starring: Dev Patel, Alia Shawkat, George Wendt
Director: Jeremy Clapin
Writers: Guillaume Laurant, Jeremy Clapin