(Dan the Man Tabor reviewed this film out of Fantastic Fest)
Let’s be real clear about one thing up top: Let the Corpses Tan may be the single greatest genre movie title since Twitch of the Death Nerve, and like Mario Bava’s clown car of giallo carnage, Let the Corpses Tan somehow kicks exactly as much ass as that moniker promises.
A non-stop blitz of cinematic brilliance, with Let the Corpses Tan, husband and wife filmmaking team Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani take a corker of a pulp set-up as the launching pad to indulge in seemingly every kind of technique imaginable. From the moment it opens in a blaze of Sergio Leone close-ups and cannon-fire-loud gunblasts Let the Corpses Tan is as confident and accomplished an achievement of swaggering cinematic mastery as varied masterpieces like Blow Out, Magnolia, or Speed Racer. But with more urine-play than any of those films, at least until the cowards at Warner Bros. release the uncut Speed Racer.
Terrifying, hilarious, captivating, endlessly inventive and occasionally startlingly erotic, do not miss this film.
Hell, if nothing else, Let the Corpses Tan will forever change the way you think about Ennio Morricone’s Once Upon a Time in the West score.
Beginning in the blaze of the summer sun, Tan opens at a lazy summer retreat for burnt out writer Bernier (Marc Barbé) and his girlfriend/muse Luce (Elina Löwensohn). Once upon a time, Bernier and Luce startled the world with their bizarre and confrontational ‘performance art’, which Cattet and Forzani illustrate in surreal flashbacks that might, among other things, put you off champagne for a while. Or make you drink more of it, depending on how you swing.
Anywho, middle age has taken its toll on both artists and they pass their days in empty bacchanalia with some guests at their out-of-the-way Mediterranean spot, including Luce’s lawyer (Michelangelo Marchese) and his three buddies.
Unbeknownst to man or woman, their house guests are actually a small criminal crew, led by the smoldering, lethal Rhino (Stéphane Ferrara). The gang knocks over a shipment of gold and then go to ground at Bernier’s estate, hoping to quietly ride out the manhunt.
Things get dicier when another of Bernier’s ladies (Dorylia Calmel) arrives at the house touting her maid (Aline Stevens) and the son she’s violated custody laws to keep.
Everyone’s on edge and feeling the tension…and then a couple of cops swing by.
What follows is an all-out orgy of destruction and chaos, all of it beautifully coordinated by Cattet and Forzani. There’s something like a dozen moving pieces to any given scene, as each character within the bloodsport has their own location, goal, and motivation, yet you never lose sight of where anyone is or what they are trying to accomplish. The script is tight as a drum, without even an ounce of fat. Cattet and Forzani do a masterful job in laying out and setting off the sequences of gains and reversals, expertly ratcheting up and then releasing tension. Like a beautifully conducted symphony, Let the Corpses Tan rises and falls, knowing how to use stillness and silence to build to crescendos of violence and action.
And none of that is even mentioning just how beautiful the film is to look at. Virtually every frame of Let the Corpses Tan could be pulled out of context and stand as exquisite, but taken as a whole they create a riveting, propulsive crime film that flows with the energy of a nightmare. Every frame of this damn thing is a masterpiece of composition, motion and color and shadow woven together into heart-stopping beauty. The sound design complements the visual feast, amped up to eleven so that every rustle of earth or squeak of board underfoot grips you with tension, and every gunblast feels downright apocalyptic.
I knew we were in for something special early on, during what could have easily been a bland bit of exposition. Luce and Rhino sit at opposite ends of a table and have an exchange that’s half accusation, half threat, and half foreplay (I’m not a math guy). Should be a simple enough sequence, right? Master, shot, reverse shot, master, out.
Instead, Cattet and Forzani’s camera glides from one end of the table to the other with each verbal volley, but each time they come back from the other side the speaking character’s face is in tighter and tighter close-up, until it seems that Luce and Rhino are staring each other down, mere fragments of an inch separating the pair.
A film this chock-full of cinematic bombast could easily become wearying, but fortunately Let the Corpses Tan is supported by that rock-solid screenplay. As writers, Cattet and Forzani gave themselves as directors the perfect spine upon which they can let loose their balletic experiment in form and image.
Cattet and Forzani are the real stars of the show, but the cast all do exceptional work. This is not a chatty movie, but everyone in the cast does sterling work communicating volumes with just their expressions and body language. In one of the film’s best runners, one of the women is gradually revealed to possess (or be possessed by) a very particular fetish, a reveal that is largely illustrated only in a glance here, a quivering lip there.
It’s kind of an astonishing act of trust, when you think about it. Cattet and Forzani had to convince these performers to trust that this gonzo, go-for-broke madness would all cut together (and I genuinely cannot fathom being on set for some of the shit that goes down in this movie), and they in turn had to trust that this ensemble would be able, to a person, to command the screen even when they exist within the frame only as silhouettes or masked in shadow or fire.
The high-wire act somehow worked out though, resulting in maybe the most fun I’ve had in a cinema this year. Let the Corpses Tan belongs in your collection alongside the best of Brian de Palma, cinematic excess for the sake of cinematic excess, a case where a film’s style is so bombastic that it goes beyond ‘style over substance’ and becomes style as substance. Let the Corpses Tan isn’t about a goddamn thing besides reveling in the glorious, gorgeous possibilities of unchained cinema, and in that is spectacular.
You have to see this thing to believe it.