Those uninitiated with Shane Curruth's bewildering time travel indie flick Primer probably came away from his long-awaited follow-up, Upstream Color, with a terrible headache: for those who knew better, well... that was pretty much expected. Upstream Color isn't the kind of movie that you can fall instantly in love with - like Primer, which slowly drew in any army of dedicated fans thanks to its intricate and oddly mesmerising take on time travel cause and effect - it's one that slowly wears away at you. The kind of movie you find yourself pondering days or weeks later. A puzzle box of a movie, for sure, a single viewing of Upstream Color surely isn't enough. The basic gist of the plot concerns a man and a woman, bizarrely connected by increasingly strange set of circumstances concerning a parasite, and what happens as they struggle to come to terms with their relationship. How do they know one another? Have they met before? Of course, in true Curruth style, the answers don't come easy - that is, they're entangled in the complex, layered narrative. But regardless of the "plot," Upstream Color is a strange, surreal trip worth taking.
