UPSTREAM Colour is the follow-up feature to Carruth's 2004 debut Primer. Whereas that film felt like a scientific journal in its approach to time-travel, being at pains to present its perils and opportunities in a grounded reality, Upstream Colour is more akin to an abstract painting.
Office worker Kris (Amy Seimetz) is attacked and drugged. She is hypnotised and controlled by her attacker to the point that she withdraws all her savings and gives them to him. The next day she wakes, unable to remember a thing. Later, she sleep walks to a field where another mysterious man gives her a blood transfusion with a pig (resulting in a sort of telepathic link between the woman and animal). So begins this oddity.
Upstream Colour is poetic film-making: beautiful, longing shots, sparse dialogue and an ambient soundtrack. As Kris forms a relationship with a man (Carruth), which may or may not be directly influenced by her link to the pig, the film poses the question: What makes us who we are? Don't expect any easy answers though. This is a film more about feeling than knowing.
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