Review: Let the Corpses Tan

Married Belgian filmmaking duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s latest collaboration, the trippy, bloodsoaked thriller Let the Corpses Tan, wears its gonzo sensibilities and their multitude of cinematic influences proudly over its heart and sleeves. It’s an unabashed, artful exercise in excess that’s deeply indebted to the filmmakers who blazed a path so something as strange and hallucinatory as Let the Corpses Tan could exist. Much like their previous and similarly challenging films Amer and The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears, the latest from Cattet and Forzani will appeal primarily to a specific sort of genre buff, but for those attuned to the same offbeat wavelength as the writer-directors, Let the Corpses Tan will be an absolute treat.

A gang of heavily armed crooks have just robbed an armoured car carrying 250 kilos worth of gold bricks. With the police hot on their tail for such an elaborate heist, the thieves decide to hole up at a secluded desert retreat where their shady lawyer-slash-money launderer (Michelangelo Marchese) awaits their arrival. The plan is to spend some time there, destroy all evidence, and wait to emerge once the heat dies down. That plan goes south once they realize that the estate is also home to a conceptual artist (Elina Löwensohn), who is being visited by her current lover (Marc Barbé). To make matters worse, her lover’s wife (Dorylia Calmel) has arrived with their young son, looking for closure and confrontation. The gang leader (Stéphane Ferrara) urges the members of his crew to keep their composure and not lose their cool, but once the police catch up to them, all hell breaks loose.

Let the Corpses Tan is cool, assured, and confident, but in the kind of endlessly reverential and referential way many of Cattet and Forzani’s American counterparts are towards American grindhouse cinema of the 60s and 70s. Cattet and Forzani aren’t as enamoured with Americanized conceptions of genre, but rather they’re in love with all forms of European cinema, cycling through various artistic and narrative approaches at breakneck speed. There are nods to French New Wave pioneers like Godard and Truffaut, sun-soaked references to Italian western icons Corbucci and Leone (with some auditory nods to Morricone), plenty of psychosexual undertones and menacing visuals at home in the works of Argento and Bava (both Mario and Lamberto), and hallucinatory freak-outs worthy of Jodorowsky, Buñuel, and Dali. Let the Corpses Tan is a purposefully misanthropic and nasty affair that couldn’t have been made without a deep love for all forms of cinema, and it’s a credit to Cattet and Forzani that they’re able to balance so many different elements and influences.

In many ways, Let the Corpses Tan would make for an exceptional double bill with current cult movie favourite, Mandy, from Canadian-American filmmaker Panos Cosmatos. Both films similarly swipe bits and pieces from the films they love and cobble them together into something new and original. The problem with such an approach is that it’s the sort of thing that film buffs either love or they hate. Some people enjoy watching talented filmmakers like Forzani and Cattet mounting set pieces and visuals that are clear and noticeable nods to filmmakers from a previous generation. Some people find it fun hunting for those little details, and it leads to such films becoming eminently rewatchable for anyone who finds themselves drawn into the film’s trippy, disorienting world. On the other hand, some film buffs can vocally find such an approach annoying and unoriginal. If they think they’ve seen everything there is to see in the history of cinema, they’ll balk at filmmakers using their latest work to trot out a list of tropes, techniques, and visuals that they find cool. Let the Corpses Tan is the type of work that has no middle ground when it comes to someone enjoying it or finding it interesting, but that doesn’t mean that Cattet and Forzani don’t know exactly what they’re doing.

Amid their neverending series of hat-tips to past masters, Forzani and Cattet have crafted a unique type of siege picture. The filmmakers never stay in one place for very long, giving Let the Corpses Tan a feeling of non-stop escalation that will keep invested viewers riveted, even when they have no clue what’s going on. It’s wholly cinematic, but the editorial decisions create and effect that’s not unklike cycling through security camera footage from different rooms of a house. In the film’s best sequence, Forzani and Cattet keep resetting their film’s constantly running and ticking clock to show a pivotal moment from the perspective of every major character while they were all off in different places while it happens. Once the film really gets going just before the halfway point, nothing good is happening for all parties involved and the switch back and forth between different characters has an admittedly electrifying effect that’s easy to get caught up in.

Some of it might be a bit too cute for its own good. There’s a nifty shot of a swaying hammock and numerous nods to gold body painting, neither of which add anything and feel somewhat tacky in terms of the film on the whole. Every sound effect (chewing, the tearing of meat, cigarette lighters that sound like forest fires) have been amplified to within an inch of their lives, giving of a silly vibe instead of a serious one. Even the nighttime sequences have bright and eye searing colour to remind the viewer rather unsubtly that things are heating up.

But thankfully that adherence to artistic indulgence and excess never grows tiresome, and Let the Corpses Tan keeps barrelling forward like a boulder down a mountain. It’s the type of work that’s always in danger of wearing out its welcome, and thankfully Cattet and Fonzi know exactly when to cut it all off. The story won’t be particularly memorable, but many of the film’s vivid images will linger for quite some time. Ultimately, that’s the whole point of something like Let the Corpses Tan. You can either take it or leave it.

Let the Corpses Tan opens at TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto on Friday, October 5, 2018.

Check out the trailer for Let the Corpses Tan: