The luminosity is taken from the image, the color is taken from the background. Since it is always white, there is no color.
But it allows much more.
You can animate the effect setting 3 layers. The first one will be the image, and the second will be a white-black gradient. If you apply a multiply blend mode on this, you will get a white result as before on the white part, but the original image on the black part (multiply by white gives white, multiplying by black has no effect.)
On the white part of the gradient, you get the same effect as before. On the black part of the gradient, you are blending the image over itself, and the result is the unmodified image.
Now, all that is needed is to move the gradient to get this effect dynamic: (hover to see it in color)