It’s cryptic, elusive, startling, seemingly impenetrable. It’s like someone grew up on a farm listening to Boards of Canada at all times and then got told to make a movie. It’s as tactile as a fractal, but close, earnestly romantic yet emotionally distant. It’s beautiful and sinister and damned if I knew what was happening when I was watching it. It’s like all the things a lava lamp is meant to be.
The simplest way of describing the plot is as follows: Amy Seimetz plays Kris, who is kidnapped and drugged early on in the film, her life derailed. She gradually begins to piece it back together with the help of Jeff (writer/director/cinematographer/composer/editor/producer/cameraman/that guy who made Primer, Shane Carruth).
This story does happen in Upstream Colour, but the narrative is fractured by jolts of imagery. It isn’t immediately obvious how these all fit together, especially in a piece as sparsely populated by dialogue as this. It’s deliberately and ostentatiously open to interpretation.
Maybe there’s a holistic interpretation in the mind of Carruth. Maybe there are things that are just in their because they’re aesthetically interesting. You could pay rapt attention, trying to exact a path through the maze, but you should probably just wander along admiring the structure at all levels the Boards of Canada comparison is apt, for in Upstream Colour the viewer is led through an occasionally scary ambient kaleidoscope, and it’s the little reoccurring patterns that are the most satisfying bits to notice. Carruth’s own score is reflective of the film – alternately fragile and invasive.
Caruth’s abilities are somewhat daunting. Shot largely on camera equipment you can buy in the high street, it’s staggering to see the technical accomplishments of this film. It’s also hard to assign a genre to. There’s element of science-fiction, fantasy, horror, thriller, crime and mystery. It’s as much about memory as it is about the conceit of the drug that enables the events. There’s some disgusting body horror elements, a romance that mends the broken, and a variety of small animals who all register different levels of cuteness.
The most obvious problem with a film like this is simply that it is alienating. Minimal dialogue is delivered quietly, like it’s been mixed by Kevin Shields. Deliberately opaque, obscure and off-putting, once Kris’ ordeal at the hands of her kidnapper is over there is even less to grasp onto in the narrative (which makes sense, considering her mental state).
There’s no getting away from the fact that it’s not an easy film to become emotionally involved in, but if you do then it’s going to be a spellbinding piece of cinema.
Released in UK cinemas on Friday 30 August 2013.