Unapologetic Visual Feast

Let the Corpses Tan/Laissez bronzer les cadavres (2017) - Cattet, Forzani







As usual, Belgian visual stylists duo, Hélèn Cattet and Bruno Forzani, creates unapologetic visual feast. Good to see Elina Löwensohn becoming a European arthouse queen in recent years as she plays an aging matron of a group of criminals hiding in some sunny Island here. It seems she has been wielding some cult like sexual power over these men and a writer (Marc Barbé), as she struts around with very little clothing. Things get a little crazy after the gang's gold heist and unexpected visit from the writer's wife, kid and a pretty nanny.

But really, story has little importance here. It's all to do with ultra stylized assault on the senses. Sex and violence mingles. Rapid editing, colors, shadows, sound design... Cattet and Forzani know what they are doing. Their craft pushes its giallo trappings on to another level, elevating it to an art form.

Visual Feast

The Strange Colors of Your Body's Tears (2013) Cattet, Forzani





The dynamic visual stylist duo Hélèn Cattet and Bruno Forzani (Amer) offers here again, the most inventive and gorgeous visual feast ever put on screen. The Strange Colors concerns a man named Dan whose wife has disappeared, a suspicious cop named Vincentelli, a sexy woman named Laura and other tenants living in a gorgeous art nouveau apartment building adorned with Mucha style paintings, gilded colums and colorful stained glasses. There is a serial killer roaming around decapitating his victims or something. The apartment has secret passageways behind the walls and whatnot.

It's all about giallo inspired visuals and sound design. It's all leather, switchblades, the shape of the female genitalia, colors, voyeurism, texture.... The black and white stop motion sequence in the middle is to die for. Who cares if it doesn't make any sense? It's gorgeous!