The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears

Certainly in the spirit of giallo but with the soul of Kafka. No simple narrative flow, not even a regular narrative structure, this visual and aural treat is not the simplest of watches. Always beautiful with continuous references to stained glass, art nouveau, eyes, knives and bared and bleeding flesh, the music and effects are also alluring, evocative and disturbing. A man returns from a business trip to find he cannot find his wife ( Edwige, nudge nudge aficionados! ) and that's about it, unless you count the wondrous building in which the film takes place or the spaces behind the walls. The directing duo are clearly fascinated by the Italian genre films of the 60s and early 70s and deliver up the most sumptuous offering, its just that, not unreasonably, they are less interested in the story lines but more in the more primal elements that go into even the lesser giallo. They love the colours, the sounds, the wide eyed screams and the trickling blood. The confused participants who know not whether they are mad or even dead, cannot help but draw us in to this manic mayhem and those of us who, similarly enjoy this craziness, can only applaud and breathe a sigh of relief we got out alive.

At first I couldn't really explain why I didn't like this film. After all, the foyer and staircase in the building are the kind of atmospheric luxury one expects in a giallo or apartment horror, and the old lady upstairs reminded me a bit of The Sentinel, one of my favorite films ever.

I think it's the main guy. I don't like him. Not that I like every horror protagonist or "point of view" killer in giallo, but I couldn't empathize or feel horror, I just felt a kind of worldly distaste. The kind of distaste I feel for Wall Street moguls, tax accountants, and Republicans. Not the kind of supernatural fascination or psychological curiosity one might have in the horror/thriller genres.

In fact nothing about this felt haunted to me. There was no pang of nostalgia, no whisper of ghosts (real or imagined), no monstrous memories sparked, no sleeping dogs refused to lie. The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears is more of surreal modern nightmare centering about a rich white man. His dream felt incoherent in a bad way, it did not compel me to pay attention, I could barely get through this. But I have to give it 6 stars for the incredible beauty of particular scenes.

Yet another exercise in all-style-no-substance film-studies-friendly/paying-audience-hostile giallo "homage" from Forzani and Cattet. Oh for Pete's sake - come on guys! Amer was one thing, quite interesting at the time, but the value of that film has somehow been retroactively diminished by the release of its identikit successor. Replicating the surface details of the giallo style is easy peasy - anyone can do it - it's the Spaghetti Bolognese of filmmaking. But the point of the original gialli classics was that they were proper functioning movies that would have worked as exciting thrillers even without the stylistic flash. Neither Amer, nor TSCOYBT, have proper plots, and for me, failure to provide an adequate narrative element is an abdication of the filmmaker's primary responsibility.

I hope, for Forzani and Cattet's sake, that they are not currently working on another EU-cash-lake-for-art-house-piffle funded giallo homage, because they will be risking losing their credibility forever after, which would be a shame, because I get the impression that they are extremely talented and visionary filmmakers.

I attended the Belgian premiere of 'L'Étrange Couleur des Larmes de ton Corps' at Film Fest Gent 2013 after reading that the film would be a homage to the giallo genre and therefore would contain music by Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai (in my opinion the two best film composers there are). The only giallo I have seen until now is 'Suspiria', though I'm familiar with the names of some of the directors and actresses and also some of the titles through the work of Morricone and Nicolai. I undoubtedly missed a lot of references, but of course I understood that the name of Dan's wife, Edwige, was no coincidence :)

I was ready to immerse myself in a pure genre film, but it was still quite a challenging trip. On the plus side, the film is beautifully shot, with great use of extremely vivid colours and interior (Dan's breathtaking house by - I assume - Horta) and exterior locations (the Law Courts of Brussels). Much thought has also been put into the editing, the sound design and the choice of wonderful Italian film music. On a technical/aesthetic level, this movie is a triumph.

On the downside, the script is deliberately disorienting, which is even reinforced by most of the shots being exhausting close-ups. Some sequences/parts of the story are too short (the bearded man taking pictures of beautiful women, which is never explained), while others last too long (the sequence where Dan wakes up 20 times thanks to an incredibly irritating door bell that rings about 100 times). Although the story is thin, it's often confusing and hard to follow and the film's conclusion is rather unsatisfying.

All in all, this clearly is more of an art film than a narrative film, so while this means that it's beautiful to look at from start to finish, the story leaves much too be desired.

One of the few films that made me nervous with it's chaotic plot that leads to nonsense. I can say that the beginning of the action was in place, the shots were unusual, but still unique and well illustrated.

Many parts of the film are accompanied by intense music, which in some parts may be superfluous, at least with the power with which it is expressed. The subjective impression is as if you took a narcotic and as if you were straight, twisted at the same time.

The film served as an inspiration to Marilyn Manson for two music videos and I can say that he made a great whole, and 4 obvious reasons - the videos were much shorter than the film.

From another point of view, we can call this film an extravagant masterpiece in which a lot of effort has been invested, but through the continuation of the film, that same effort falls into the water.