FROM FRANCE

WHAT IT’S ABOUT: A hand with no body attached escapes from a freezer in a suspicious-looking lab. It must make its way across Paris to reach the person it once belonged to: a young man named Naoufel, who was last seen lying in a puddle of his own blood. As the agile limb continues its quest, defying the laws of physics, avoiding detection, and wrestling street animals, we learn the story of Naoufel. Born somewhere in an Arabic-speaking ex-colony, he lost his loving parents at an early age and was sent to live with his rough uncle in Paris. Growing up to see the dreams his parents had paid out for him dissipate, Naoufel got a job as a pizza delivery guy. One night, while making a delivery, he encountered a sassy young woman named Gabrielle. They only communicated through an intercom, but lonely Naoufel felt a sense of kinship and decided to pursue her, triggering a set of events that changed his life forever, and led to his hand taking a perilous journey.

WHO MADE IT: Writer, director, and animator Jérémy Clapin has been in the filmmaking game for the past decade. He has directed four shorts, including the critically acclaimed and equally unsettling “Palmipédarium” about a boy on a duck hunt. For some of these shorts, he also provided writing and animation. “I Lost My Body” is Clapin’s feature debut, adapted from a novel “Happy Hand” by Guillaume Laurant, who also became a co-writer. Best known for his collaborations with Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Laurent co-wrote the screenplays and handled the dialogues in “Amelie” and a bunch of others: in fact, Laurent and Jeunet are currently in pre-production of a project about underground dwellers. The composer for “I Lost My Body,” Dan Levy, is relatively unknown, but his impact on the film’s atmosphere is palpable, especially in the striking collaboration with L’Ordre Du Périph, a Parisian hip-hop collective, and the closing titles ballad with singer Laura Cahen. The animation studio behind “I Lost My Body” is Xilam, and its founder Marc du Pontavice, also served as the producer on the film. Du Pontavice and Xilam are best known for the animated series “Oggy and the Cockroaches” about a cat and three cockroaches named after the Ramones brothers, as well as various other TV and film adaptations of characters, including Lucky Luke, The Daltons, and Mr. Magoo. While experienced in feature-length animation, Xilam made its debut in non-genre with “I Lost My Body.” To complement the animations, the film has some fantastic voice acting. Newcomer Hakim Faris is Naoufel, Victoire du Bois, who played Elio’s friend Chiara in “Call Me By Your Name,” is Gabrielle, and seasoned actor Patrick d’Assumçao is Gabrielle’s uncle Gigi. We highly recommend watching with subtitles, but if you prefer to go for the English version, you’ll be enjoying Naoufel dubbed by Dev Patel, Gabrielle, by “Arrested Development’s” Alia Shawkat and Gigi by “Cheers’’” George Wendt: not shabby!

WHY DO WE CARE: Animation is a laborious and imaginative way to render a story. When the creators don’t fully engage with its storytelling possibilities, instead of settling for technical and aesthetic advancements as the carrying vehicle, the result can seem underwhelming and too quickly discounted as niche. “I Lost My Body” is very apt in its formal characteristics, with crisp, striking, moody yet genial graphics, where human figures stand out briskly against the highly detailed backgrounds where each particle of Parisian everyday grime is meticulously drawn out, whether on the subway windows, or the library shelves. This is especially evident in the parts of the narrative, where we follow the hand. But the main strength of “I Lost My Body” emerges through its macabre sensitivity. It’s hard not to think about Thing, the character from the Addams family franchise, when you start watching its French counterpart patter on the floor and aptly operate its five fingers as miniature limbs in a sort of manual parkour. But when an interaction with a pigeon who doesn’t want to share its nesting spot unravels into a funny and gruesome stand-off between bird and paw, it becomes clear: this hand is nothing like the servile and only slightly mischievous forearm that lives with the monster family. The hand in Clapin’s film is more assertive, nimble and focused than its clumsy owner full of teenage sensibilities: perhaps as a metaphor of unrealized potential, or a physical evolution, which is also encountered by Naoufel himself. But most importantly, the hand is a grisly reminder of the fleeting nature of humanity, which becomes a refreshing, welcome respite from the usual emotional pandering via dialogue. Even though “I Lost My Body” is particularly good at that, too, since its dialogue is rendered by one of France’s foremost experts on communication within a film.