Let the Corpses Tan (2017)

Directors: Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani

Screenplay: Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani

Cast: Elina Löwensohn as Luce;  Stéphane Ferrara as Rhino;  Bernie Bonvoisin as La brute; Michelangelo Marchese as L'avocat; Marc Barbé as Max Bernier; Marine Sainsily as La nounou; Hervé Sogne as Le policier; Pierre Nisse as Le jeune; Aline Stevens as La femme dorée; Dorylia Calmel as La femme de Bernier; Marilyn Jess as La policière

Long awaited, tragically not properly given their due¹, the return of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani pleases me immensely. Wanting to raise eyebrows even further than before with the surreal sexual imagery, the duo have transitioned away from giallo to the crime and Poliziotteschi genres of Italian pulp cinema alongside visibly references to westerns, set at the isolated home of an eccentric artist Luce (Elina Löwensohn) whose decision to welcome in criminals backfires when they, after a gold heist, end up in conflict with two police on the premises alongside a drunk author's wife being catch in the crossfire with her maid and son. Luce just sits back and watches on at the carnage at hand.

The irony in this change of genre is that, for any accusations of style over substance, Let the Corpses Tan tells a story just as complex as you might get in a crime film, i.e. basic, but cuts out the chaff and tells a lot which is usually told in exposition through the visuals instead. Knowing as well this is actually based on a novel, Laissez bronzer les cadavres by Jean-Patrick Manchette (an important French novelist) and Jean-Pierre Bastid, really adds to the interest of how what is usually told through a standard unpacking of narrated plot points it being told here instead in full detail, by through a visual medium that you need to keep on your toes with and focus upon. That's not to deny how surreal some of the scenes are, the dreams and fantasy sequences bizarre, but they all actual meld together with some point if you register what's going on.

To the creators' credit, the miniscule plot is told in detail, right down to one of the most prominent and compelling details in that not only will they constantly flash the time when events that transpire take place, even after a minute from the last with onscreen text cutaways, but they also show events which transpire with the same minute from different characters. Baring some different locations, most of the film is entirely set in an isolated area of land which becomes a terrain for bloodshed and backstabbing, never a sense of complete confusion of geography even if it's dense and frantic at points. Certainly at this point in their career, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani have defined their style entirely as their own, for all their borrowing (still in this film too) of aesthetic and actual music from classic Italian genre cinema not a tribute act in the slightest. They are the right direction in terms of tackling past influences, paying homage but distorting it into new and refreshing directions.

From https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape
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Prominently is their obsession with textuality in audio, visuals and content. They are practically fetishists in many ways, never a creator fixated on leather gloves to the point even old giallo look normal in comparison, the leather of the two cops' costumes heard in painstaking sound detail. Actors' appearances are fixated and obsessed over, and how befitting in this case this marks my rediscovery of Elina Löwensohn, who I saw once ago in her youth in a TV recording of Michael Almereyda's Nadja (1994), than a regular of a few Hal Hartley films, now a much older but striking actress onscreen, now the muse for Bertrand Mandico and appearing in this. As the central (frankly phantom) id who watches over the carnage like a one woman Greek chorus, also likely the female figure of shadow who urinates gold and is the clear personification of death in the phantasm sequences, she is such a huge virtue of Let the Corpses Tan.

The human body in general, what it is wearing and when bare, is lavished over too, contrasted with death, blood, gold and dust adding to a hyper sensitive tone. In mind to this, it has to be raised that one of these director-writers, Hélène Cattet, is a female creator and as prominent a creative force as Bruno Forzani is. This is poignant to point out because, as with their previous work, they rely heavily on the sexualisation and nudity of the female form. This is prominent in Let the Corpses Tan when you have someone fantasise about machine gunning of a woman's clothes off, all which could be seen as highly objectifying. Having a strong female creative force involved really complicates the viewer's reaction to these images, as with their other work the highly sexualised depictions laced with violence and S&M could be read with problematic detail, but in lieu to this have a bit more to keep in mind. Its notable in this particular film that, not only are all these sexual sequences always the fantasies and delusions of the male cast, even the most bizarre like a woman on a wooden X being tied with ropes so hard she lactates spring water, but the female characters are very dominant. The male characters are doomed to their lusts for gold, and even after they have scenes when held hostage by the male criminals, the women start to show tactics both in lieu of protecting themselves and especially the young boy. Löwensohn's part as well, this figure who doesn't bat an eyelid to being threatened by cop or criminal, is too strong to dismiss. The gaze a viewer is inherently complicated as the viewer can not only be male or female but also heterosexual, bisexual or gay, which adds more questions to raise when dealing with these images, and when a creator is a woman, that furthers this complexity alongside how the images are used and told.

Despite gut reactions at point to some of the material, and the sense this is still a crime thriller in the clothes of an avant-garde film, it's a true cinematic UFO which even challenges both the idea of the viewer's gaze, knowing our creators are male and female, and that it completely reinterprets these genre tropes into something profound. Stylistically the directors are completely confident by now, the change needed to not become predictable the genre chosen rather than changing their directing style. They are interesting in how, with its heavy emphasis on editing and saturation of images and sound, they take the avant-garde and infuse it with their own utter surrealism like ants running on a map of the central location. They are, frankly, one of my favourite working directors, as a duo, entirely for bringing something truly unique to the cinematic form and especially for cult cinema.

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde/Psychotronic/Surreal

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): High

Personal Opinion:

The return of Cattet and Forzani is something I always anticipate, and Let the Corpses Tan didn't disappoint. That they look like they could transition to various different genres and change their styles, though, is a new and exciting point to their careers.

From https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/08/31/arts/31letthecorpsestan/merlin_142704852_55b
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1) That the film has merely booted to Amazon Prime, where people may not know about I did, and hasn't had even a DVD release just goes to show the state of British film distribution.