‘Body Odyssey’ Review: A Beautiful And Overwhelming Sensory Experience

  |  
Mar 24, 2025
body odyssey

If you’ve been looking for a film to pair with Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, look no further than Grazia Tricarico’s feature film debut Body Odyssey. Where Fargeat investigates beauty standards through skinny femme bodies, Tricarico investigates them through a central female character who is both beautiful and terrible to behold; a god among humans, in a sense, a nonnormative body that transcends perfection. That character is Mona, a female bodybuilder who has learned how to obsessively control her mind and body to craft a perfect form. Tricarico uses Body Odyssey to examine how we look at bodies like Mona’s, and when supposed perfection becomes monstrous.

Mona (played by actual bodybuilder Jacqueline Fuchs) is a legend in her community, known for her impressive physique and dedication to shaping her form. By her side is her trainer Kurt (the late Julian Sands), constantly monologuing about gaining total control of your body and what it takes to achieve greatness. Mona listens as she lifts weights, gets massages, and injects herself with steroids to help enhance her efforts. But once she learns she’s competing in the Miss Body Universe, her training regimen only gets more intense. Her workouts are longer, her calorie restrictions are higher, and her mind is pushed to its limit as she goes through this ritual to cleanse, purify, and perfect her physical form. 

Also Read: ‘The Astronaut’: New Sci-Fi Horror Is Thrilling But Doesn’t Stick The Landing [SXSW 2025 Review]

While Mona believes she has full control over her body, she begins to lose control of her mind as her quest for perfection has led others to perceive her as monstrous or a freak. As she walks into doctors’ offices or film sets, eyes are drawn to a body that’s both masculine and feminine, a conflicting figure who, in the eyes of plebes, more resembles a god than a human being. Mona feels these eyes search her body, consuming her as an object of curiosity. But what she wants is to be consumed as an object of desire. As she starves her body of calories, her grasp on reality begins to slip and her need to be desired overcomes her desire for physical perfection.

Fuchs, first and foremost, is a Swiss professional female bodybuilder, but got her start in acting when she starred in Tricarico’s short film, Mona Blonde, the film on which this feature is based. Even though Fuchs isn’t a trained actor, she plays Mona with fierce sincerity and tackles a complex role quite impressively, displaying a level of vulnerability not often seen on screen from even the best performers. While her line delivery is sometimes a bit stiff, Fuchs ultimately grounds Mona through a reality-shattering spiral with a must-watch performance.

Opposite Fuchs is the always stunning Sands, who we sadly lost too soon. His performance here is commanding and, again, complex as he cares for Mona but cares just a little bit more about winning. He is the embodiment of the archetypal overbearing coach who pushes his protege too fast and too hard in the name of victory. But Sands plays the character with such Shakespearean confidence that he feels like something entirely new.

Also Read: Bill Skarsgård Crashes Out in Fun, Grim Social Thriller ‘Locked’ [Review]

That sentiment of unique familiarity extends to Body Odyssey as a whole. It follows a narrative structure we’ve seen before in films like Black Swan and Perfect Blue where the lead crumbles in the face of success. But, Tricarico has such a unique point of view and aesthetic that it never feels derivative. Instead, she uses the expected beats of such a film to build up a fascinating examination of one woman’s experience chasing perfection, albeit a different kind of perfection than most people would expect.

The artistically and perfectly styled sets play a major role in the film’s uniquely liminal vibe, highlighting Mona’s slow detachment from reality. While Body Odyssey is seemingly set in the present, the gym and training facility more resemble the sets from David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, especially a red, womb-like gynecological suite. Every space feels like a painfully constructed piece of art as massive rooms are filled with perfectly placed pieces of gym equipment. This isn’t your typical sports training movie where sweaty bodies pump iron in a dark gym. This is a museum of the living body, with god-like beings on display.

As Tricarico appeals to the visual senses, she also appeals to eroticism and desire by how she and cinematographer Corrado Serri utilize the stereotypical male gaze—filming the female body in sexualized parts—to sexualize a nonnormative body. They want the viewer to look at Mona how you’d look at an attractive woman and revel in her physical form. This is not a place for disgust, but a place of appreciation, and even worship. That gaze mirrors how Mona wants to be seen herself, as something sexual and desirable. Body Odyssey becomes practically tactile as the camera glides over Mona’s body with a quiet hunger. 

The cherry on top is the film’s sound design, led by Eric Guerrino Nardin, which pushes Body Odyssey from a film to a cinematic experience. Certain moments are cacophonous and overwhelming, almost rattling your eardrums as your anxiety matches Mona’s. While this is a movie about Mona’s body, Tricarico uses all of the elements at her disposal to bring in the viewer’s body, too, and have us practically sync with Fuchs.

Body Odyssey is a stunning sensory experience that channels the vibes of the late Cronenberg into something exciting, bizarre, and gorgeous to behold. Tricarico has a bright future ahead as a director and I can’t wait to see what strange tale she tells next. The film’s dream-like atmosphere and visual spectacle are something to behold, creating something that should be discussed in the same breath as The Substance. 

4.5

Summary

Body Odyssey is a stunning sensory experience that channels the vibes of the late Cronenberg into something exciting, bizarre, and gorgeous to behold.

Tags:

Categorized: