Upstream Color

Shane Carruth's second film, nine years after Primer. The plot is hard to state because the film does not state it either. A woman loses her will after being infected with a parasite; a man empties her completely and she remembers nothing. Then a pig farm enters the story; the parasite continues there, and an unexplained connection forms between people and animals. Later she meets a man who has been through something similar, and neither can tell whose memory is whose. Carruth made it almost alone: he wrote, directed, acted, shot it, composed the music, shared the edit with David Lowery and distributed it himself. It proceeds through editing rather than dialogue: sounds and images repeat, and there is rhythm rather than logic between scenes. A frequently noted motif is Thoreau's Walden; the woman copies the book out by hand. Amy Seimetz and Carruth take the leads. It premiered at Sundance in 2013. An important work for anyone who likes experimental narrative and science fiction that explains nothing. For a viewer wanting resolution the film does not supply it, and one viewing is usually not enough.