The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears

Characterizing Belgian co-directors/writers Helene Cattet
and Bruno Forzani’s style is tricky since they’ve only made two
features to date. Both “Amer” and “The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears” are visually overpowering homages to Italian gialli
from the ’60s and ’70s, seedy crime/detective stories with a focus on
psychological realism and sexual perversion. Cattet and Forzani’s gialli
feel more abstract than films by masters like Mario Bava, Dario
Argento, and Sergio Martino in that their films are not
narrative-centric. “The Strange Color
of Your Body’s Tears,” a mystery about a deranged man’s search for his
missing wife, is largely made up of elliptical flashbacks and dream
sequences. It’s a confrontational fever dream film told from constantly
shifting perspectives, and a chilly, dizzying trip into a genre defined
by violently conflicting emotions.

In “The Strange Color
of Your Body’s Tears,” we initially see the world through the eyes of
Dan Kristensen (Klaus Tange). He drinks to excess, but only after he
discovers that his wife Edwige (Ursula Bedena) has disappeared. It’s
unclear how he knows this is true given that he’s just gotten home from a
business trip. But Dan’s grip on the film’s reality is flimsy at best.
Everyone that he meets in his building can suspiciously relate to his
plight, including the pushy detective whose wife is also missing, and
the grieving 7th floor neighbor whose husband vanished. These supporting
characters aren’t just supporting characters. They’re like Dan in that
they’re united in absence, which makes their bond more than a little
uneasy.

To be perfectly honest, you don’t really learn much about
these characters beyond scattered images of mysterious goings-on that
have traumatized them, particularly disembodied body parts: eyes, lips,
rears, and uh, other unmentionables. Cattet and Forzani aren’t really
interested in telling a story, but rather relating the texture and
sounds of the people and things that haunt Dan’s building, an Art
Nouveau apartment with bulging walls, lurid stained glass fixtures, and
vertigo-inducing stairwells.