Body

As an early discussion of Jesus — whether he remained Jewish after being baptized — may suggest, Body is a film about faith. Specifically, about the possibility our existence may transcend the physical limits of our lives.

To this end there is a range of corporeal presences. In some shots the characters appear disembodied, reflected in glass. In a pre-title prologue, the police find a man hanging dead from a tree. They assume it’s a suicide, until the man gets up and walks away. A female apparition stops a character’s car. In a parody of the afterlife, a broken waterman floods a cemetery, breaking open the graves. Our coroner hero has to go identify his wife, which he does by her shoes (i.e., her footing, her contact with this earth). 

The coroner is one of the two central characters who deal with people and their physical nature. He prepares the dead for burial. He assumes life ends with death, so he’s puzzled by doors and windows mysteriously opened, inexplicable sounds in the night and ultimately a letter supposedly just written by his dead wife. 

In contrast, the therapist, Anna, treats bulimic girls, the living who are trying to thin themselves out of existence. In her therapy she uses physical exercises and routines, addressing the body in hope of rooting out the psychological sources of the girls’ rejection of their physical nature. As she cites a mentor, “Anyone who loves cannot be sick.”

In addition, though, Anna is a practicing spiritualist. She runs seances, has visions of the dead, records their messages, in effect extending her psychological approach to bulimia into another dimension altogether. From the mind to the soul is a small hop. Anna has believed in the presence of the dead ever since her own young son died — and she felt his presence continuing. As an emblem of her control over the corporeal, Anna keeps a huge pet dog — which she tries to tame and discipline, ineffectually. 

Of course the coroner is suspicious of the spiritualist, even as she is making advances in her treatment of his bulimic daughter, who hasn’t come to terms with her mother’s death. He is eager to leave his daughter in the hospital for Anna’s conventional therapy, but from the spiritualist he withdraws her immediately.
     As it happens, Anna does bring about the coroner’s reconnection to his daughter and her return to joy and life. Anna conducts a seance with them, to contact the wife/mother, but the coroner’s skepticism prevents it. When Anna doses off, snoring, the coroner and his daughter finally unite — in laughter. By failing but only after trying, the spiritualist does bring the two lost souls into harmony. As the closing song summarizes, they’ll “never walk alone” again.