LET THE CORPSES TAN

Laissez bronzer les cadavres!
The films by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani are perfectly cut diamonds recovered from the swamp of memory, a high-quality and sharp-edged antidote to the referential fashion jewelry by many genre-workers. In their third joint film LAISSEZ BRONZER LES CADAVRES the Belgian director couple distill the first novel by the French crime novel innovator Jean-Patrick Manchette into a sun-tanned avant-garde thriller: a gang of robbers flee with 250 kg of gold through the Mediterranean summer, finding the seemingly perfect hiding place in a remote, semi-decayed hamlet. In this place of heavenly peace, where the fragrance of past orgies still hangs in the hot air, the eccentric artist Luce gathers together the last remnants of her counter-cultural utopia. The gold poisons the idyll, and when two village policemen come to the hamlet, the situation escalates. LAISSEZ BRONZER LES CADAVRES is another radicalization of the aesthetic principle of Forzani/Cattet. The spectacular sound design – the creaking of the leather gloves! – and the rough-grained images by the exceptional cameraman Manu Dacosse dig deep into the brilliance of the European genre film of the sixties and seventies and recover its essence beyond narration: the drives, the bodies, lots of blood.

In attendance of Hélène Cattet und Bruno Forzani.