Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2015: #14. Helene Cattet & Bruno Forzani’s Let the Bodies Sunbathe!

Let the Bodies Sunbathe!

Directors: Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani // Writers: Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani

Belgian couple Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani have amassed quite a notable following based on their first two films, Amer (2009) and The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears (2013), both reconstitutions of the giallo film. Visually spectacular examinations that generally overwhelm the slight, elliptical plots confined somewhere within them, their next film seems to be a change of pace. Based on a 1971 novel by famed French crime novelist Jean-Patrick Manchette (who wrote the novel upon which the upcoming Sean Penn film The Gunman was based) and co-written with Jean-Pierre Bastid, Let the Bodies Sunbathe! (aka Corpses in the Sun) seems to center around the eccentric hostess of an isolated locale who comes in contact with stolen gold in a van as well as policemen on the trail of the perpetrators that attempted to steal it. Manchette’s movement of crime fiction was termed the “neo-polar,” a departure from 50s and 60s formulas by becoming a more invasive social critique. His written work is aligned with the spirit of Jean-Pierre Melville’s crime cinema, so it will be interesting to see how a more defined narrative works with Cattet and Forzani.

Cast: Not available.

Production Co.: Anonymes Films

U.S. Distributor: Rights available.

Release Date: While Amer premiered at Fantastisk Film Festival Lund in Sweden, Tears went to Locarno. Funding for this feature was announced in September with no word on production, though we assume it’s this winter or spring, which may mean the film is ready as a top premiere for Locarno or Toronto.

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