Upstream Color
I can't begin to understand what happened in this movie, so let me just outline the sequence of events. First, some kids drink a liquid made from insect larvae. This gives them weird powers. Then, a woman (Amy Seimetz) is kidnapped by a mysterious person, who forces these same larvae down her throat. This hypnotizes her, and the kidnapper (called "The Thief" in the credits) has her sign over all her money.
He leaves her, but she feels the larvae crawling around inside her skin. She goes to another man (called "The Sampler,") who seems to give her some sort of transfusion from a pig. She then awakens, finds that she's broke, and loses her job because of absences.
She then meets a man (Shane Carruth, also the writer and director) and they have a romance of sorts. All the while The Sampler keeps pigs on a farm, and if I'm right they each represent a person. He visits these people unseen in their waking lives, like some sort of deity. Both Seimetz and Carruth have an alternate pig personality.
Oh, and Thoreau's book Walden has some significance.
I suppose this all means something to Carruth, but the film is far too obtuse to have any resonance with me. I'm all for experimental cinema, but there are times when you wonder whether there's anything to it other than a series of images.
Still, Upstream Color is lovely to look at, and has a dreamy, trippy style, much like the films of Malick (it has a lot in common with To the Wonder in that way--both are about as equally incomprehensible). But I have little patience with a film that can't meet me half way with a narrative that makes sense.
Seimetz, who may have been in more mumblecore movies that Greta Gerwig, is very appealing. Will she make the inevitable cash-in with a Hollywood movie?
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