Review of I Lost My Body (2019) by Dzimas — 04 Apr 2020

To think this movie lost out to Toy Story 4 as best animated feature for 2019. I guess this is what happens when you give your Oscar ballots to four-year old kids. I Lost My Body is a wonderful tale told from the point of view of a missing hand, as it searches Paris for its long lost body. It takes a little while to get into the spirit of the movie but you are richly rewarded as you find out more about the shy Nauofel, to whom the hand belongs. It's the kind of storytelling and animation sorely missed today in mainstream cinema.

I would think we had become so inured to Pixar animated features that people would jump all over a film like this, but it remained largely an art house favorite until Netflix picked it up and made it available for streaming. Thank goodness for that or I might never have seen it.

Part love story, part immigrant tale, part long-lost youth, I Lost My Body speaks beyond the loss of an appendage to the loss of an identity and the attempt to find it again. I loved this story even if it was a bit slow in parts. While not for pre-schoolers, I think most children would get something out of this, as so many of us suffer through the same insecurities regardless of where we come from.