The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears

A husband comes home to find that his wife is missing. A detective comes to investigate. Soon, the two are peeling back the layers of secrecy, deception, and sex in the apartment building where the couple lives. Unusual and beguiling tenants are questioned, unlocking strange dreams and fantasies as the husband becomes deeply entangled in the mystery, but no closer to solving it.

Set in a gorgeous art-nouveau building in Brussels, The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears uses interiors that are a character unto themselves, each room a new chamber of the puzzle box, ready to be cracked open by only the most keenly attentive viewers. Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, the filmmaking duo behind the sumptuous and experimental feature Amer, are back with this visually inventive and sensual love letter to the 1970s Italian giallo aesthetic. A cinematic riddle about obsession, desire, and memory, this blood-soaked homage is considerably more narrative in structure than Amer, but employs the same colour saturated visual style and fetishistic, sexualized violence that the filmmakers have been honing in their previous work.

An enigma of lush visuals and jarring violent imagery, with a lavish score of seventies Italian soundtrack classics by the likes of Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai, this film will tie you up, caress you with a sharp blade, and keep you guessing from start to finish.

COLIN GEDDES