The Daily Stream: Let The Corpses Tan Shoots Violence With A Seductively Artistic Accuracy

(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they've been watching, why it's worth checking out, and where you can stream it.)

The Movie: "Let the Corpses Tan"

Where You Can Stream It: Shudder

The Pitch: This is not your typical Western or Giallo or crime film for that matter. Writer/director duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani combine elements from all three of these genres to create an unpredictable story about theft and violence artistically blanketed with sexual desire. After a trio of thieves obtain 250 kg of gold bars, they arrive to a remote coastal home of a seductive artist who is in the middle of a love triangle. Once the police pick up on the robbery and follow the criminals back to their newfound hideout, a hailstorm of bullets and blood rain down.

"Let the Corpses Tan" was filmed in Corsica, a gorgeous island in the Mediterranean Sea settled comfortably between France and Italy. The desolate location is reminiscent of Westerns, but there's an elegance to the set that is counterbalanced with its visual scarcity. The hideout that shelters the characters is on a piece of run down coastal property with stone walls missing and ceilings with holes in them. The vast landscape allows for the film's resident artist to freely express herself by combining painting with target practice or placing baby doll heads and random skulls throughout the terrain. However, it's not excessive like the set of "House of 1,000 Corpses". There's just enough creepy minimalism to feed into the film's notable artistic editing, camera angles, and cinematography.

The story is straight-forward and occurs over a few hours. The real selling point of "Let the Corpses Tan" is its elaborate eye candy, making it a prime option to play for escapism purposes, but also for diving into the quixotic minds of its characters. To exaggerate the sense of time and character perspective, the hour of the day is clocked throughout the film and scenes are repeated through each character's viewpoint. For example, while one character has a uniquely personal experience, later audiences will see another character's struggle at the exact same time. The focus on time and experience is reminiscent of "Run Lola Run" but in a manner that makes each character just that ... a character. There is a void of emotional investment which allows the audience to freely explore the obscure intensity of each individual experience as they navigate a life or death scenario all with money and love on the line. 

Editor Bernard Beets slices up scenes with razor-sharp precision and captures the insanity of what happens within the mind's of each character. The film's stylization is a somewhat of a cross-breed between "Kill Bill" and Alejandro Jodorowsky's "The Holy Mountain." "Let the Corpses Tan" brings a seductive layer to its surrealism and violence that keeps audiences consistently engaged throughout the entire film, never knowing what visual treat the next scene will unveil.