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.
