Body Odyssey (2024)
Directed by Grazia Tricarico
Screenplay by Tricarico, Marco Morana, & Giulio Rizzo
Starring Jacqueline Fuchs & Julian Sands.

Drama

★★★★1/2 (out of ★★★★★)

DISCLAIMER:
The following essay
contains SPOILERS!
Turn away, or be spoiled in body & mind.

You will never see another film like Grazia Tricarico’s Body Odyssey, though the closest comparisons are body-horror films like those of David Cronenberg or Julia Ducournau’s Titane; otherwise, nothing comes close. The film follows Mona (played by Swiss bodybuilder Jacqueline ‘Jay’ Fuchs), a woman in bodybuilding obsessed with achieving the perfect form. She and her body are close. She listens to it as well as she can, all the while her coach Kurt (Julian Sands) oversees everything she puts into it, from steroids to food, even when it comes to sex. When Mona’s monotonous bodybuilding existence is interrupted by a younger man named Nic (Adam Misik), she and her body begin to become two different entities with different desires. And the results are dangerous. 

Body Odyssey is a surreal and haunting portrait of a woman who doesn’t fit into a little traditional box like some men wish she would, and a woman who succumbs to the torturous pressures of other men, and the world of bodybuilding, who want her to be perfect. Mona’s caught in the jaws of a patriarchal world that doesn’t see strong women with huge muscles as feminine and a world that demands more muscle, more definition, more power. Her conflicting desires put her at odds with the world and, most importantly/worse, her own body. Something has to break somewhere along the line. Unfortunately for Mona, it all begins to break down until there’s not a single ounce of muscle, or hope, left.
Perfection does not exist, except for in the mind, and Body Odyssey depicts why seeking perfection in the body is especially harmful. The world of bodybuilding is built on searching for perfection through the body, no matter the cost. The body is never perfect enough for a bodybuilding competition. Competitors must always train more, cut more weight, eat less carbs, consume less or consume more, and so on. As one person states: “Perfection is a dangerous state of mind in this imperfect world.” A darkly comical moment that touches on the desperate journey to perfection in bodybuilding comes during an Over 50 competition following the collapse and death of a male bodybuilder, as Kurt quips to Mona totally deadpan: “He should‘ve done more cardio.”

While Mona claims she listens to her body, she doesn’t always do what’s best for it, even sometimes tricking it. Early in the film, she visits a gynaecologist who explains that her clitoris is enlarged from hormones from her steroid usage and that the increasing imbalance in her body could potentially lead to “irreversible consequences” which Mona all but entirely ignores. She generally ignores the word of doctors in favour of listening to her coach Kurt, who deviously advises her not to listen to them while simultaneously telling her: “You have control of your body“; a lie since he manages to control her body whenever she’s not controlling it. The most egregious disrespect Mona shows to her own body is when she tricks it by simulating eating using something to chew on and going so far as to take a deep whiff of her cat’s food to hold off her food cravings. She similarly rushes off to bask in the kitchen smells at a hotel after Kurt purposefully orders and eats chocolate cake in front of her—he actually stops eating it when she leaves, a nasty performance. So, despite Mona insisting she always listens to her body, it’s no wonder her body eventually starts to revolt.
In the first part of the film, Mona’s body speaks to her like a regular body, in gurgles from the stomach, or in the sounds of her muscles inside an ice bath. She tells her body at one point when her stomach calls out hungrily: “I know you want fats, but it‘s not time yet.” There’s a dialogue between Mona and her body for a little while. But her body begins to develop a critical voice, sounding very close to a deepened version of Kurt’s voice, and things really go bad after she starts to take the illegal steroids Kurt convinces her to use. Her body speaks about itself in the way of a natural landscape, as we begin to notice a parallel between the lake near Mona’s home which is experiencing environmental issues and her body under the constant pressures of bodybuilding’s expectations. “The landscape is fracturing,” Mona’s body says, and goes in depth about how it believes it’s beginning to fall apart, sort of like the lake. A man from an environmental agency visits Mona’s home to explain how the lake’s issues “could be a fault line that‘s reopening” and says the “whole ecosystem could be at risk.” Similarly, a fault line in Mona has opened up due to her increasing disregard for her body in the pursuit of bodybuilding perfection.

Mona’s treatment of her body and her body’s revolt is exacerbated by her experience with Nic, the younger man she masturbates with in a sauna one day. She falls into an obsession with Nic because he’s the only one who seemingly appreciates her physical form, the only man in her life who isn’t seeking to use her and her body. His sexual appreciation of all her hard work on her body is a kind of validation that confirms why she’s worked so hard all these years. The problem is she’s completely lost in her obsession, as well as her pursuit of perfection, that she’s drifted somewhat from reality. She engages in conversations with her body’s new voice out loud, like she’s talking to a whole other person. She goes to Nic’s home and accidentally terrifies his parents who have no idea about their supposed relationship. It all comes to a head when Nic confronts Mona about going to his house. This sends her spiraling towards a terrifying decision.

Another devastating aspect of Tricarico’s film is the portrayal of how women—not only in bodybuilding but in general—who don’t fit the mould of traditional femininity are treated by a society that places value only on a certain expression of female identity that appeals sexually to patriarchal men. After Mona’s begun the course of illegal steroids, she notices she’s growing a beard one morning and frantically shaves it off; even the world of bodybuilding that reveres muscular women won’t tolerate a woman with facial hair. One painfully obvious scene is during the shooting of a commercial in which Mona’s acting. On the set, we hear people talking behind Mona’s back. One person says: “Look at it. Looks like a man.” A woman gives her two cents: “I‘d never let myself get like that.” Yet the worst comes when Nic confronts Mona and he rejects her in the worst way possible, telling her that he isn’t into her because “I‘m not a faggot,” suggesting that he perhaps believes she’s transgender, a mix of misogyny, transphobia, and homophobia in one foul sentence.
In the end, Body Odyssey is not just about pursuing an unattainable vision of perfection in the body, it’s also about not basing our body’s worth on the acceptance, love, or desire of others, in any shape or form. Either we love our bodies on our own terms, or we cannot love them at all; a reality Mona only understands once the price of understanding is fatal.