For a movie preoccupied with death – complete with a fly competing for the most screen time, ominously buzzing throughout the film – "I lost My Body" feels like a remarkable breath of lively fresh air.

The no-frills hand-drawn animation is a stark contrast to the bright but bland and texture-less computer animation that regularly fills theaters every few weeks. Instead of jabbering animals or objects – typically dropping sarcastic quips and smirking at the camera to assure viewers that this isn’t your normal talking possum; this is a talking possum with ATTITUDE – the future Netflix release follows human beings, and even more rare, it lets their down-to-earth story breathe, build and quietly process its complicated emotions instead of sprinting through a sugar rush of pop culture references, manic chaos and gags.

Oh, and one of its main characters is a sentient severed hand that snaps a pigeon’s neck and fends off a crew of rabid subway rats with a Bic lighter. I suppose that’s pretty unusual, too – resulting in an unusually macabre and mesmerizing animated adventure.

Awaking in a coroner’s fridge with some inquisitive eyeballs for roommates, a dismembered hand uses whatever wits a lopped-off limb has to flee its prison and take to the streets, above and below, to scuttle back to the arm it once called home. While our paw-tagonist carpal tunnels through the city like Thing from "The Addams Family," giving a pesky pigeon its best "Idle Hands" impression along the way, the movie skips back to the past to learn about the young man who was once attached to our missing mitt: Naouf (voiced by Hakim Faris, but Dev Patel in the English dub coming to Netflix), an orphan living in Paris with his uncaring adoptive uncle and cousin.

He finds new life, however, after a disastrous pizza delivery ends with a sweet connection with Gabrielle (Victoire Du Bois in French, Alia Shawkat in English), a young librarian. In the hopes of reconnecting with her, Naouf ditches pizza delivery to become a woodworking apprentice, lending a hand at her sick uncle’s carpentry shop – quite literally. 

Based on Guillaume Laurant’s novel "Happy Hand," the severed hand’s storyline is obviously the grabbiest aspect of "I Lost My Body," and its entirely silent saga lives up to its reanimated potential, delivering a uniquely sensory experience as the amputated appendage creeps and sneaks its way through a dangerous world of garbage men and rodents.

It’s not going too far out on a limb (I’m so sorry) to say this is likely the first movie you’ve seen featuring a heart-pounding action scene between an amputated hand fighting off hungry rats – and when it’s not tensely warding off subway vermin, Naouf’s hand acts out a thrilling stealth mission through Paris, puzzle-solving its way out of office rooms and hiding from tenants and ambling drunks – all excitingly captured by director/co-writer Jérémy Clapin and the animation team. 

What’s even crazier than an adventure with a cleaved metacarpus is how invested the audience becomes with this wordless and weirdly lively hand, which becomes an actual character. In silence, Clapin turns a dismembered hand into a fully realized, emoting protagonist, its movements telling its story and inner life – whether it’s tensely in battle with a squirrelly pigeon, looking in disappointment at far it is from its goal or taking a well-earned breather to take in the beauty of a blind pianist’s music or the hope and innoceny joy of a newborn.

The script’s smart and carefully distributed use of flashbacks comes in handy here as well, cutting back to Naouf’s days playing the instrument – the camera lingering near the fingers as if it’s literally a muscle memory. What could be just a silly and simple grisly adventure becomes a moving tribute to the endurance of feeling – visceral and emotional. 

The latter comes courtesy of Naouf’s story, which lacks the one-of-a-kind gory hook of its subplot but still packs a meaningful punch as the orphan learns to survive his wounds old and new, both physical and emotional. 

As painted in black and white, his past with his parents is both sweet and painfully sad, cutting deep – only making his transfusion of hope after meeting Gabrielle even more impactful. A story about a guy following an unseen crush, embedding himself into her family’s life with the help of a few modest lies, could easily become creepy and toxic, but their meet-cute – a night-long conversation over a lobby speakerphone, two lonely ships crossing in the night, strangers floors apart but on the same plane – puts the effort into making the connection mean something more than surface.

The extended scene builds a lovely foundation for their sweet and sensitive relationship – never a romance but more than friendship. 

When it comes time for the movie to make Naouf own up to his mistakes, it doesn’t let him off the hook – nor does it insist on its romance. Instead "I Lost My Body" sticks its landing on a more thoughtful note on life’s cruel turns and its powerful ability to recover from them, that it’s not where one is but where one will be. It’s a remarkably full film – funny yet tragic, heartwarming yet heartbreaking, crazy yet quietly reflective – for something that’s told with so minimal, from the mostly wordless hand-on-the-run sequences to the sweet, delicate conversations.

That extends to the sketch-like hand-drawn animation, sparse and occasionally stiff (in a pleasantly unvarnished way, like a thumbprint on claymation) but still colorful, textured and expressive, telling a rich story in its minimalist way.

And if all of that isn't enough, the movie also features some sound advice on killing the next fly that annoys you. On that alone, it'd be a must-see – but even without that, "I Lost My Body" demands to be found. 

"I Lost My Body": ***1/2 out of ****

"I Lost My Body" screens at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 29 at the Avalon. The film will also come to Netflix in November.