A.k.a. Upstream Colour

D/S: Shane Carruth. P: Shane Carruth, Casey Gooden, Ben LeClair, Scott Douglass. Cast: Amy Seimetz, Shane Carruth, Andrew Sensenig, Thiago Martins. UK dist (DVD/blu-ray): Metrodome Distribution.

Upstream Colour belongs, vaguely, to the arthouse SF school of Under the Skin (2014), in which a stripped-down plot supplied a simple framework for an austere and poetic meditation on the soul. Upstream Colour – written and directed by Shane Carruth (who, in addition to co-starring as the male lead, also acted as his own editor, composer and cinematographer, and possibly made the sandwiches in his spare time) – follows a similar brief, but despite some pleasing visuals and an abstract narrative, notably lacks any poignancy whatever: its cold, calculating style calls to mind the early short films of David Cronenberg (Stereo, Crimes of the Future) — ingenious, skilfully-made diagrams, in essence, with about as much humanity as a killer Sudoku. Upstream Colour is a significant improvement on Carruth’s previous film, the incoherent time-travel puzzle Primer (2004), in that he has (slightly) reigned-in his love for wilful obfuscation. Not that Upstream Colour is a straightforward, mainstream crowd-pleaser, exactly: it’s a detached, clinical study of an anonymous Weirdo (Thiago Martins, identified in the credits simply as “Thief”) who creates a wormlike parasite to infect a young woman, Kris (Amy Seimetz), the latest in a long line of similar test subjects. The parasite renders subjects unusually susceptible to hypnotic suggestion and mind control, even conferring a degree of telepathy. The Weirdo convinces Kris that iced water is a magical energy drink — obviating the need to eat solid food — and that an abstract painting is a TV set. He reads her endless passages from Thoreau’s “Walden”. He appears to be conditioning her — calmly, methodically, ruthlessly — for purposes that remain unclear. The brainwashing turns Kris into a twitchy, alienated misfit, causing her to lose her job.

We now cut to a Second Weirdo (Andrew Sensenig, a.k.a “Sampler” in the credits) — possibly the Chief Weirdo, though (repeat after me) that remains unclear: a doleful avant-garde composer, who spends his evenings blasting high-frequency sound through immense bass-bins into the ground. Kris is somehow drawn to Weirdo #2, showing up one night at the pig farm where he lives (having been abandoned by Weirdo #1, once he’s cleaned out her bank account). Weirdo #2 takes her into an operating theatre, removes the looooooooooong tape-worm parasite from an incision in her ankle and transfers it into the body of one of his pigs. He also transplants part of the pig into Kris. Kris then wakes up back in her own car, feeling lost and confused, with no memory of how she got there.

Time passes. Kris — still deeply troubled by her experience — has tried to rebuild her life, and now runs a printing shop. On her way to work one morning she meets Jeff (Carruth), a personable guy whose persistence (in the face of near-catatonic disinterest) finally pays off when she agrees to go out with him. Jeff, we infer, is also an ex-test subject; at his ankle, Kris notices a small cut, like the one on her own. Occasionally he seems psychologically detached, zoning out completely from the world around him. He freaks out at work and attacks two of his colleagues. We likewise infer a telepathic connection between Weirdo #2, Jeff and Kris; we “see” him in the background of several scenes, apparently eavesdropping on their conversations, though they seem to be unaware of his presence.

Over time, Kris and the pig develop a long-distance psychic link. When the pig becomes pregnant, Kris becomes convinced she is too; visiting her GP, however, she learns her reproductive system shows signs of an abortion (which again she can’t recall), meaning she cannot have children. Meanwhile, the gravid pig gives birth to her piglets. Weirdo #2 puts them into a sack, and drops them into the river to drown. The sack floats upstream and lodges by the roots of a gnarled tree. The piglets decompose, releasing strange chemicals into the water; later, strange blue flowers begin to bloom on the tree. Kris and Jeff trace Weirdo #2 to his pig-farm, and kill him. They and his other test subjects come to live on the farm, and raise the pigs with love. Fin.

Upstream Colour is the kind of film you’ll either find brilliantly abstract or maddeningly obtuse. It’s cleverly constructed, and its lengthy brainwashing scenes are genuinely disturbing. The ambiguities of the plot, and the detached filming style (with minimal dialogue, and odd juxtapositions of seemingly-unconnected scenes) are skilfully sustained throughout the film, and contribute to a growing sense of an enormous, nationwide conspiracy — a conspiracy all the more frightening for the obscurity of its purpose. The film is punctuated by attractive, colourful, abstract-expressionist sequences of brightly-hued chemicals swirling and fusing, in or around the human body. Medical detail is ickily credible, in the approved Cronenbergian fashion. The narrative meanders at its own pace, hither and yon, keeping us continually off-balance. There are no characters, as such — at best they’re depersonalised test subjects, carrying out detached, robotic tasks even they don’t understand. The motives of the chief “villain” are suitably ambiguous, leading us to wonder if he’s really no worse than a misguided idealist, seeking to restore human interconnections; the nods to Thoreau suggest a utopian, back-to-the-land subtext, in which people must be stripped of their materialist concerns before they can live in true harmony with Nature. But (altogether now) Nothing Is Made Clear. Which is perfectly fine, of course; as Thomas Pynchon once said, “Why must everything be easy to understand?” Upstream Colour is clearly the work of an acutely intelligent and original mind, though its total indifference to narrative convention will make it a hard sell for most viewers. With nobody to care about, and a Zen-like pseudo-plot that’s hard to define, the film exists on a determinedly cerebral level that’s certainly intriguing but discourages any kind of profound emotional response. Still, it has apparently garnered some critical acclaim, with Shane Carruth likened in some quarters to Terrence Malick — proving, I suppose, that some reviewers are more easily-overwhelmed than others.