Upstream Color (2013)

A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives.

Director:

Shane Carruth

Writer:

Shane Carruth

Stars:

Amy Seimetz, Frank Mosley, Shane Carruth

5 wins & 34 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Amy Seimetz	...	Kris
Shane Carruth	...	Jeff
Andrew Sensenig	...	The Sampler
Thiago Martins	...	Thief
Kathy Carruth	...	Orchid Mother
Meredith Burke	...	Orchid Daughter
Andreon Watson	...	Peter
Ashton Miramontes	...	Lucas
Myles McGee	...	Monty
Frank Mosley	...	Husband
Carolyn King	...	Wife
Kerry McCormick	...	OBGYN
Marco Antonio Rodriguez	...	MRI Tech
Brina Palencia	...	Woman in Club
Lynn Blackburn	...	HR Manager

Storyline

Kris is attacked one night, and hypnotized, using a grub with hypnotic properties, administered by a thief. She follows the thief's instructions to give him everything, even taking out loans. After the worms are extracted, she wakes up to find her life ruined. She's lost her job, her finances are destroyed. Years later, she meets Jeff whom she may have a lot in common with.

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Plot Keywords:

psychological thriller | very little dialogue | caterpillar | nosebleed | checkbook | 

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Genres:

Drama | Sci-Fi

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook Official site

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

30 August 2013 (UK)

Also Known As:

Color a contracorriente

Filming Locations:

Dallas, Texas, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$50,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$28,649, 7 April 2013, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$444,098, 27 June 2013

Company Credits

Production Co:

erbp

Technical Specs

Runtime:

96 min

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The film that Kris is editing at the beginning of the movie is A Topiary, the film that Shane Carruth had begun production on before deciding to film Upstream Color instead.

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Goofs

(at around 32 mins) When Jeff and Kris are in the coffee shop and Kris is digging in her case, there is a menu standing on the table. When the shot shows both, there is no menu standing on the table.

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Quotes

Thief: The water before you is somehow special. When you drink it you feel revived and full of energy. It is better than anything you've ever tasted. Take a drink now.

User Reviews

a triumph of pretension over lucidity

Upstream Color (1:36, NR) — 2 — borderline, bargain basement, original

Shane Carruth is justly famed in SF fandom for Primer, an ultra, super, hyper low-budget film shot in a storage locker with a cast of about 2.5 where you spend most of the movie wondering exactly what the heck is going on here. But, once you do, you can't help but admire the cleverness of how you were set up for it.

So I had hopes for Upstream Color, Carruth's 2nd feature, which he spent 9 years building up to. As with Primer, Carruth wrote, directed, produced, acted in, edited, and scored the film, and also spent some time running the camera. Unfortunately, in this one you spend ALL of the movie wondering exactly what the heck is going on here.

It's not quite a silent film, but don't count on the dialog for help in figuring out what's up. For the first 15 minutes it's minimally audible mundanities; for the last half hour, it's totally non- existent; and in between it's sparse, sporadic, and largely soporific. For almost all of it there's subtle, atonal, pulsing background tones which I don't think really qualifies as music but which does serve to create a sense of unease and everything being somewhat off.

The plot, such as I could decipher it, is that an unfortunate young woman, Kris (Amy Seimetz), gets tasered into unconsciousness and has a parasitic worm literally forced down her throat. It seems to make her hypnotically suggestible, during which  time her mainly unseen assaulter runs her thru a series of odd exercises, including looting her bank account. Gradually she seems to return to normal, but by then she's been missing from work for some time and her credit is completely shot, so she loses her job.

We next pick up on her some time later (the time lapse indicated by a noticeably shorter hair style) as this guy on a train, Jeff (Carruth) spots her and uses really crappy, creepy pick-up techniques on her which nonetheless eventually prove successful.

Meanwhile, intercut thru all of this (and there is a LOT of cutting in this movie — seldom does a given shot last more than 5 seconds) is this sound engineer who spends a lot of his time in a fenced-in pigpen for no apparent reason and never utters a word.

These are the more or less intelligible parts of the movie. Most of it is less accessible.

This is a triumph of pretension over lucidity.