Rent Upstream Colour (2013)

Not your average romcom - Upstream Colour review by LS

Basically your eveyrday tale of boy-meets-girl who gets tasered, force fed some kind of worm harvested from the roots of a wild orchid, then hypnotised and made to memorise Thoreau's 'Walden' before having the aforementioned worm transplanted into a piglet with whom she shares some kind of telepathic link. It's classic disturbing body horror with parasitic worms and self-injury, somehow wrapped in Terence Malick sugar rather than David Cronenberg's rather more dark and bitter coating. Fans of Carruth's earlier 'Primer' may appreciate what I can only describe as quantum cinematography and the soundtrack he provided for the film, but you will need to keep a clear head while watching so you can try to figure out just what the hell might be going on.

There is a stream, and it does get some colour 'upstream' I think... - Upstream Colour review by Strovey

Upstream Colour (or Color in the USA) is a difficult film to describe in many ways. It is very loosely plotted, slow and at times makes little sense from a linear story-telling point of view. The slow lazy progress and seemingly haphazard story will infuriate many people and I can imagine probably 50% of any random audience leaving way before the end.

The biggest problem with the film, aside from the glacial pace, is large swathes of the story are hard to understand and seemingly deliberately obscure. This can be immensely frustrating, for me the frustration came at the end of the film when a couple of end scenes did not wrap up anything up and just made me scratch my head. Whether the director, writer, and the actor playing Jeff, Shane Carruth, made it this way on purpose I do not know.

The film is very dreamlike in the imagery throughout giving it more of a Euro-Arthouse project and certainly the subject matter, what I believe the maker was trying to say, is more on a level with these more esoteric and sometimes impenetrable films. The acting, particularly by Amy Seimetz playing Kris, is beautifully realised and she certainly glues the film together when it could easily fall apart the seams from time to time but overall when thinking about the film, and after seeing it you do, the overriding question is more than likely ‘what was that about’.

There is a theme of a complete loss of identity and the breakdown of everything you are to start again – I think. The tasks given by The Thief that come back to Kris are making paperchains and reading a novel by Walden, a writer I have no experience of, other than some comments of it being dreary and almost torture to read, perhaps this is an in-joke. The connection of all living things seems to be in there somewhere although I cannot help feeling the pivotal character of the Pig Farmer/Sampler, played by Andrew Sensenig, maybe should have been a bit less obfuscating to make a little more sense of his part in the story. Was he the man who started it all or a benign presence?

If you ever find out tell me.

I did not dislike Upstream Colour but neither did I really like it. Definitely a curate’s egg of a movie and will divide opinion from all that witness it. I enjoyed it during my viewing but overall, I felt that Carruth should perhaps use joined-up writing just a little more so that the ideas he is trying to explore did appear through a fog of confusion.

Somewhere in Upstream Colour there is a really good, interesting and thoughtful story and indeed question but perhaps a lack of budget or good creative partner for Carruth muddied the waters. Having said this if the director/ writer carries on in this vein pushing ideas and themes such as this and in Primer he is going to make a fantastic film that you will not be able to forget.