A severed hand escapes from a refrigerator in a laboratory and begins a journey across the suburbs of Paris to reunite with its body, that of a young man named Naoufel. His story is told via flashbacks.
As a boy in Morocco, Naoufel aspires to be a pianist and an astronaut and records his day-to-day life on a tape recorder. While riding in a car with his parents, he distracts his father while he is driving, causing a crash. Naoufel survives, but both of his parents are killed. He is forced to live in France with his emotionally distant uncle and his crude cousin.
As a young man, Naoufel works as a pizza deliveryman, often criticized by his boss for being late. On one occasion, Naoufel delivers a pizza to a young woman, Gabrielle, at her apartment block. They never see each other, as Naoufel is unable to get through the lobby's malfunctioning security door, but they have a conversation through the intercom, and Naoufel becomes infatuated with her.
Naoufel tracks Gabrielle to the library where she works and follows her to a nearby neighborhood where she drops off medicine to a carpenter, her uncle Gigi. Naoufel, seeing an old posted ad for an apprentice, quickly uses this as an excuse for why he is there. Gigi is reluctant but accepts after learning that Naoufel is an orphan. Naoufel moves out of his uncle's house and into an attic apartment provided by Gigi. He learns the tools of the trade and edges closer to Gabrielle, though he never mentions their first encounter.
After a conversation about the arctic, Naoufel builds a wooden igloo on a nearby rooftop for Gabrielle. Returning home one day, he finds his cousin talking to Gabrielle, and discovers that he has invited them both to a party. That evening, Naoufel takes Gabrielle to the rooftop, where they discuss fate; Naoufel wonders if it can be changed by doing something unexpected, such as leaping from the roof onto a nearby crane. Naoufel shows Gabrielle the igloo he built and reveals that they had met before when he delivered pizza. Gabrielle is upset, unsure of Naoufel's intentions and fearing that he had taken advantage of Gigi solely in order to pursue her. She leaves in a rage. Hurt, Naoufel goes to his cousin's party alone and gets into a drunken fight. The next morning, Naoufel goes to work hungover, sporting a black eye. While cutting wood on a bandsaw, Naoufel is distracted by a fly and tries to catch it as his father taught him when young, snagging his watch on the blade and severing his hand.
Back in the present, the hand reaches Naoufel and lies on his bed while he sleeps, but it cannot re-attach itself and eventually hides under the bed. Naoufel, depressed and hopeless, revisits his old tape recorder, which still has recordings of his parents – including the fatal car ride. Gigi attempts to talk to him, but Naoufel does not respond. Gabrielle comes to see him and finds his room empty. Inside the cupboard, she finds an igloo that his severed hand had built out of sugar cubes. After searching the empty igloo on the roof, Gabrielle finds Naoufel's abandoned tape recorder and discovers a new recording on it. Listening, she learns he had leapt off the ledge and onto the crane as he had once discussed, thereby taping over the recording of his parents' deaths.
In a final flashback after making the jump, Naoufel lies on the crane and smiles to himself as he looks out at the city. His severed hand retreats into the snow.
In May 2019, following its Cannes premiere, Netflix acquired the worldwide distribution rights to the film, excluding France, Turkey, China and the Benelux region.[9]
The film was released in France on 6 November 2019 by distributor Rezo Films. Netflix also gave the film a theatrical release in some countries, including the United States on 15 November and the United Kingdom on 22 November.[10]
Reception
Box office
I Lost My Body grossed $1,106,777 in France and $29,654 in Turkey, bringing its total box office earnings to $1,136,431.[4]
Critical reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 97% of 89 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.1/10. The website's consensus reads: "Beautifully animated and utterly unique, I Lost My Body takes audiences on a singularly strange journey whose unexpected contours lead to a wholly satisfying destination."[11] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 81 out of 100 based on reviews from 19 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[12]
Jordan Mintzer of The Hollywood Reporter called the film "A highly original and rather touching account of loss, both physical and emotional."[13]
Peter Debruge of Variety magazine wrote: "I'd hazard to say it's one of the most original and creative animated features I've ever seen: macabre, of course — how could it be otherwise, given the premise? — but remarkably captivating and unexpectedly poetic in the process."[14]
