It’s not instantly clear what you’re looking at as Body Odyssey (2023) begins: perhaps led by the title, my first guess was an Inner Space type scenario, which turns out not to be the case. In a way, this is a very fitting opening for such a strange, unsettling but highly rewarding film: disorientation is key. What we’re actually looking at is a lake bed; above, floating on the lake’s surface, is Mona (Jacqueline Fuchs).
Mona is a bodybuilder. Meeting her more properly in the next scene, we see something of the dynamic between her and her coach, Kurt (the inimitable Julian Sands in one of his final roles). He runs her through a range of competition poses, studying her form on each muscle group. Finally, he praises her – as he should, as Fuchs is impressive, and Mona is at the top of her game. Bodybuilding is, as Mona puts it, a gesture to the self, born of love. And sometimes, love hurts: Mona is faced with constant scrutiny, an increasing workout burden and steroids, too: her every move is managed. Mona is in her late forties, and insists that she knows her body well: she is used to this codified, surveilled existence, and still thriving on it.
When she qualifies for a new competition, due to take place three months down the line, the regime intensifies even further. However, for all her avowals that she is comfortable with the plan, she begins to unravel. A chance encounter with a young man called Nic (Adam Misík) provokes her imagination: she comes to understand what she has sacrificed to be where she is, and this disrupts her usual relationship with her body. It also prompts a kind of wondering about the life she might have had, and even may still. As the script puts it, ‘the landscape is fracturing’. Mona’s journey onwards is fascinating to behold.
Films about women whose relationships with social roles and expectations cause them trouble are nothing new, but my word, Body Odyssey feels very new. What an impressive piece of world-building. The film establishes a cogent, engaging and otherworldly atmosphere: consider its use of colour, chiaroscuro, lingering macros. Then there’s the sparse, significant dialogue, heavy with subtext but free to add in dabs of humour here and there. Its sinister, rumbling soundtrack – and its wonderful, minimalist sets, adding surrealism to the world of bodybuilding. Where there’s form and dietary regime and gym sessions, there are dreamlike disruptions to the norm: clairvoyants pop up to give guidance, contests take place in bizarre settings, symbols and hallucinations weave through the film’s more linear moments. If there’s any comparison to be drawn, it’s to the work of Brandon Cronenberg – and Cronenberg on the world of body-building would be quite something, but it’s doubtful he could outdo director Grazia Tricario. Tricario has form, too: he essentially made a short-film version of Body Odyssey in 2014, also with Jacqueline Fuchs, titled Mona Blonde. Whilst this isn’t quite body horror, though horror always feels like it’s pressing in at the periphery of Body Odyssey, it’s certainly a film preoccupied with new, unusual discourses on bodies and selves.
The representation of Fuchs and her body is very interesting. It’s one of those odd quirks of cinema that, just recently, Love Lies Bleeding (2024) has popped up with its own close focus on a female bodybuilder, although Body Odyssey doesn’t deviate from Mona’s journey as a weightlifter in order to tell a different story. Her body is the story, really, and we follow her where she takes it. Sometimes she is represented as having a dizzying erotic appeal to men, though in the film men typically appear a little foolish, disposable and part of the general compartmentalisation of her life – excepting Nic, who operates differently. In other moments, the script addresses the ways that many men find a very muscular female body repellent. Whether or not you personally approve of the aesthetics, however, you cannot deny that this lifestyle demands incredible focus and commitment. There’s very little attention paid here to the kinds of passive, nubile female flesh beloved of the likes of Rubens, where beauty is associated with the-then rare privilege of being well-fed and idle; people always fantasise over what they can’t easily have. Perhaps, in that, Mona’s body offers another version of the tantalising female form, though of course you also need time and money to achieve it. The camera is fascinated with Mona, but doesn’t gloss over the realities of her chosen lifestyle: we see sweat, veins, dry skin, tense muscles. The inclusion of so many post-50 bodies is interesting too: we see them as they are: amazing, yes, but also ageing. The film allows itself fantasies, but in other respects it’s crushingly honest.
Equally engaging is the relationship between Kurt and Mona, not least because Sands is able – in a comparatively small amount of screen time – to bring his customary gravitas to the role. As he ever did, he grasps the film’s cultivated weirdness perfectly, and where other actors might have disappeared into the background, he never does. Magnetic, watchful and mysterious, Kurt is an intriguing character who keeps us at a distance, and it’s thanks to the skill shown by Sands, to whom the film is quite rightly dedicated.
There’s something of 80s-era Eurocinema in Body Odyssey which is hard to pin down: the experimental touches, perhaps, the roiling atmosphere, the fracturing narrative, or the fever-dream artistry of the film as a whole. People seeking a more straightforward piece of storytelling may be left behind here, but for anyone else this is a bold, painterly study of mind and body, with an unusual locus. I was mesmerised from start to finish, and this film is highly likely to be one of my favourite films of the year.
Body Odyssey (2023) will appear at the Raindance Film Festival 2024 on 22nd June. For more information, including tickets, please click here.