Laissez bronzer les cadavres

LET THE CORPSES TAN (LAISSEZ BRONZER LES CADAVRES!): A pretty good shootout thriller which is a bit messed up by philosophical and avant garde pretensions in fantasy sequences (some may be memories) and stilted dialogue. They don't quite negate the negation but might have negated the the film. Fortunately the action shots triumph over the postmodernist pisstakes to acheive a satisfactory synthesis.

An artist and a novelist are living in a series of ruins on a hilltop in the South of France, their lawyer arrives but has made a pact with a gang of Gold Bullion robbers to use the abode as a hideout. Meanwhile the author's wife arrives with her maid and a child (snatched) from a previous realtionship. Actually the robbers meet them by the hitching and give them a lift. Motorcycle cops investigating both the robbery and child abduction come to the ruins.

A many sided battle ensues with shifting allegiances taking place. This is very much a homage to/pastiche of the exploitation euro-Gangster films of the 1970's but is weakened by (imho) unnecessary psychedelic additions. The only effects I really appreciated was the effect of the Gold on the crooks, their faces tanned with avarice as they gazed on the bullion. Reminiscent of scenes from The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre. Some really savage and bloody scenes.

Directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani with the assistance of novelist Jean-Pierre Bastid on the screenplay would have delivered a pretty good thriller if they'd left out or toned down the biarrare elements. 6.5/10

All style, no substance. It's extremely hard to follow after the setup establishes the theft of gold bullion, with some of the worst storytelling and worst character development I've ever seen. We never learn anything about these people, and have little idea who's shooting who over most of the film; meanwhile the directors give us pointless cuts back in time which add nothing, and the film quickly descends into unexplained scenes of sex, violence, crucifixion, and urination. This dreamy/nightmarish style leads to interesting imagery at times and the scenery in the ruins overlooking the azure waters of Corsica is striking, but mostly the film is an exercise in wild surrealism and a mashup of old film references that was more frustrating than compelling, at least for me.

I believe that people will enjoy this film in direct proportion to two things: your appreciation for bravura cinematic style, and your hard-wired facial recognition talents. The two collide immediately, as we are introduced to some of the characters (I think) via extreme closeups of eyes and mouths. The filmmakers avoid all of the usual techniques for establishing character identity and relationships, especially among members of the gang. I can't honestly say that I know what happened in the film's last third: who betrayed whom, who was firing what weapons, and so on.

In the meantime, though, I saw things, cool things, good things, that I'd never seen before on a movie screen. The stylistic flourishes kept me just engaged enough to not walk out. In the end I'm glad I saw it and even more glad that I didn't pay for a ticket (I have a membership at the local arthouse cinema). Mostly I'm frustrated, because if the filmmakers would put storytelling first and then maximize style as much as possible (like, you know, every other filmmaker on the planet) rather than vice versa, this could have been a kinky classic.

A road gang hijacks a gold shipment, kills the driver and escorts, then hides out at a picturesque seaside retreat occupied by an artist and her retinue.

More unexpected and unwanted visitors arrive. So do the cops. Much gunfire, double dealing, and bloodshed occur along with weird and surreal erotic dreams interspersed with action.

That's the movie in a nutshell. What propels it far beyond the blood-and-gore 70s Italian exploitation flicks it seems to emulate is everything else: photography, acting, editing, sound (someone obviously has a fetish for creaking leather clothing), and scenery.

Ah, the scenery! A crumbling seaside Mediterranean cluster of decrepit interconnected walls and broken down church are so much a part of the action one can almost imagine them taking cues from the director.

It doesn't always make sense. This is partly due to sparse subtitling (it's in French) and partly to the simple fact that at times it's almost impossible to keep track of who are the "good" guys and who are the "bad" guys. (Not that it makes a difference!)

But cinematically this film is a real hoot especially if you enjoy occasional off-the-wall movie nonsense produced to sound and look like High Art despite the underlying tenuous threads of a plot.

Recommended. Sort of.

The people who are giving this really bad reviews must be knuckle draggers. This is a very unique and interesting flawed thriller. Flawed because is a little hard to follow with all the time jumps and inserted symbolism.

But if you stick with it you should be rewarded with a very interesting layered movie like you have not seen in a long long while.

It's a thinking man's (or woman's) movie. Pay attention.