Fragments of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani first published by Senses of Cinema On 22 February 2018, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s Let the Corpses Tan was screened at Ciné Lumière in London’s Institut Français Royaume-Uni, with the writer/directors in attendance. The following fragments have been reconstituted from both an interview conducted before the screening, and a Q&A…
The gender(s) of genre in Cattet & Forzani’s ambisexual cinema first published by Senses of Cinema The strange cinematic experiments of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani grow over the graves of departed genres. Their shorts and their first two features are loving pastiches of giallo, that lurid Italian detective mystery genre which peaked in the…
Let The Corpses Tan first published by Sight & Sound, in a preview piece on the Cult strand from the London Film Festival 2017 The searing sun. A shot is heard. A bullet shell falls. Extreme close-ups on three faces. A gun is aimed. A man says, “I never miss, is this what you want?” A…
First published as part of an end-of-year listicle thingy in Grolsch FilmWorks, as (probably) my favourite UK theatrical release of 2014. A labour of love from Belgian writer/director couple Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, and forming a complementary diptych with their female-focused 2009 feature debut Amer, The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears is a giallo-inflected journey into…
First published by FilmDivider Interviewer: Anton Bitel It is a strange irony that the closer a filmmaker cleaves to genre, the more likely she or he is to transcend it, creating a quintessence that approaches a total, pure cinema. So it is with Belgian couple Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet, whose dizzying 2009 feature debut…
Amer first appeared in Sight & Sound, February 2011 Review: Near the beginning of Amer, as a mother (Bianca Maria D’Amato) adjusts her belt buckle, her young daughter Ana (Cassandra Forêt) is shown inserting her fingers into her ears to block out the scratching of metal on metal. Accordingly the noise is amplified to unnaturally…
The ABCs of Death first published in Sight & Sound, May 2013 Synopsis: An anthology of 26 short films, each named for a different letter of the alphabet, each directed by different genre filmmakers, and each focused upon death. Review: “I’m sorry, it was going to be better – but we didn’t have time.” The…