Vanguard, Sketched!

Jodorowsky's Dune

At his Tumblr page, Sketchy Musings, Francis Foster sketched images from films he saw at TIFF this year, including these four from the Vanguard Programme. Click through images from (and reviews of) all the films he saw at TIFF, as well as daily sketches.

Soul

The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears

The Fake

THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS: Twitter and Review Round Up!

The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears is not a movie that can be easily explained. There have been both awestruck and overwhelmed reactions to the film--not surprising considering its over-the-top visuals and Last Year At Marienbad-style "narrative."

Here's a sampling of what folks have been saying on Twitter as well as choice quotes from some of our favorite reviews of the film.

"You have absolutely never seen anything like The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears."

--Anton Sirius, Ain't It Cool

"It's tempting to reference Strange Colour as a sort of neo-giallo, a term applied frequently to its predecessor. But it's not, really. It's something else, a strange new language that uses those familiar elements as their base while going off in some other direction."

--Todd Brown, Twitchfilm

"Lengthy passages are unrelated to any discernible narrative, and seem to exist in that interzone your mind travels through just before it goes to sleep. You may be familiar – it’s often the time when your leg twitches, heart skips a beat and you slam open your eyes again."

--Jordan Hoffman, Film.com

"The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, a visual masterpiece that will confuse, confound, and hypnotize you as it’s one of the most visually extravagant explorations of the gaudy and grotesque ever committed to film . . . if you give into its lusty charms, you won’t be disappointed in its endless delights, surpassing the intensity of many titles it owes its existence to."

Nicholas Bell, Ion Cinema

 

"Cattet and Forzani treat the camera like a murder weapon, slashing it across rooms, penetrating characters' eyeballs in extreme close-ups, emphasizing the garish color schemes, and obscuring conversations with multiple split screens. They're not telling a story so much as transmitting hallucinations."

--Matt Barone, Complex Mag

"I don't think I can win here. I looooooooove The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears. Love. I'm in love, you guys. I'm not fucking around. I think it's one of the best horror movies I've ever seen."

--Travis Lee Bean, Film Colossus

For those of you planning to attend Austin's Fantastic Fest, there is great news! The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears will be screening there this year.

FINAL SCREENING: The Strange Colour Of Your Body's Tears!

Wake up, sleepy head!

Pull on your black leather driving gloves, get your eye make-up just right and hurry over to the Scotiabank because today is the final screening of The Strange Colour Of Your Body's Tears!

THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY’S TEARS Screening Times:

Saturday, Sept 14th, 12:30 PM SCOTIABANK 8

THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS Premieres Tonight!

Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani's The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears premieres tonight at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema at 6:00 PM. Head over to our previous post to see the poster and trailer.

Tickets can be purchased:

• ONLINE: TIFF.net/thefestival
• BY PHONE: 416.599.TIFF or 1.888.599.8433 (Toll-free) 
• IN PERSON
• Festival Box Office; 225 King St. West
• Bloor Hot Docs Cinema Box Office; 506 Bloor Street West

Further information about Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani's The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears can be found on the Festival website, as well as on the The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears Facebook page and IMDB page.

THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS screening times:

• Wed., Sept. 11, The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema 6:00 PM
• Thurs., Sept. 12, Scotiabank 3 9:30 PM
• Sat., Sept. 14, Scotiabank 8 12:30 PM 

Five Questions for Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani (THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS)

Lucky us! We managed to get Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, the directors of The Strange Colours of Your Body's Tears, to answer five questions for the Vanguard Blog.Their Giallo-inspired film is playing at the Festival this year.

1. There are many different definitions of Giallo, but how would you define Giallo?

Incredible music, incredible settings, incredible murders! An extraordinary mix between sex and death which put the viewer in a strange position, lost in a game with his point of view!  

2. What are your favorite experimental films?

Meshes of the Afternoon  by Maya Deren, Scorpio Rising by Kenneth Anger, Nightshots by Stephen Dwoskin, Un chant d'amour by Jean Genet, The Sex of Self-Hatred by Solomon Nagler, The Dead Man 2: Return of the Dead Man by Aryan Kaganoff, The Big Shave by Martin Scorsese, Mamori by Karl Lemieux. 

 

3. What film(s) do you consider an influence on your work that people might find surprising?

Certified Copy by Abbas Kiarostami.

4. Since Giallo influenced slasher films, is there one specific slasher film that you think lives up to its Giallo influences?

If we consider Brian de Palma's Dressed To Kill as a slasher, it is the one! If not, there are some bit and pieces of giallo in the beginning of The Burning, or in movies as Ripper: Letter From Hell and Tuno negro.

5. What is the one piece of advice you would give to emerging filmmakers?

Work, work, and work.

Now that's you've researched all the movies mentioned in this post, you can get your tickets for a screening of The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears, which is playing this year's Toronto International Film Festival.

Thanks to these talented and clearly very busy filmmakers for taking the time to chat with us! 

THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY’S TEARS Screening Times:

Wednesday, Sept 11th, 6:00 PM THE BLOOR HOT DOCS CINEMA

Thursday, Sept 12th, 9:30 PM SCOTIABANK 3

Saturday, Sept 14th, 12:30 PM SCOTIABANK 8

Director Profile: Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani (THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS)

Not content to remain merely inspired by the giallo films of the 1960s and '70s, filmmakers Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani seem determined to reinvent giallo as its own genre. The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears is their latest foray into feature film and it is screening as part of the Toronto International Film Festival's Vanguard Programme.

Cattet and Forzani made several short films on a miniscule budget before their feature debut, Amer, in 2009. These short films speak in a commanding language despite containing little to no dialogue.

2002's Chambre Jaune was awarded Best International Fantastic Short Film at Sitges and also screened at Montreal's Fantasia Festival, eventually appearing on Synapse Films' Small Gauge Trauma: Vol. 1,  a 2006 compilation of Fantasia short films.

L'Etrange Portrait De Le Dame En Jaune, from 2004, won The Cult Film Archive Award at the 2006 Kinofilm in Manchester as well as Best Short Film at Spain's Festival de Terror de Molins del Rei in 2005.

In 2009, Cattet and Forzani released Amer, which examined three different phases in its female protagonists's life--childhood, adolescence, and adulthood--all marked by sensual discovery and visceral unease.

In an interview with Australia's Desktop, the duo reveals that Amer was not only shot in 39 days, but also that they "tested all the storyboards with a DV-cam and tested all the camera settings before the shoot." Additionally, they note, "we shot the total film with the two of us acting all the characters" before the actors eventually came on board. The result was 900 shots and 2,200 cuts, which is astonishing considering their limited funding.

2012's The ABCs of Death boasts a segment from Cattet and Forzani, the exquisite "O is For Orgasm." Like their previous work, it shows Cattet and Forzani continuing to explore and expand the same visual and sonic hallmarks of their previous works: garish colors, deep shadows, experimental mise en scene, and re-recorded and non-diegetic sound.

For The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears, screening at this year's Toronto International Film Festival Vanguard Programme, Cattet and Forzani adopted a slightly more narrative approach, described on the AnonymesFilms website as such: "A woman vanishes. Her husband inquires into the strange circumstances of her disappearance. Did she leave him? Is she dead? As he goes along searching, he plunges into a world of nightmare and violence . . . " 

With Cattet and Forzani behind the cameras, one can expect more sumptuous, provocative images, but no doubt there will be surprises, too.

THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY’S TEARS Screening Times:

Wednesday, Sept 11th, 6:00 PM THE BLOOR HOT DOCS CINEMA

Thursday, Sept 12th, 9:30 PM SCOTIABANK 3

Saturday, Sept 14th, 12:30 PM SCOTIABANK 8

THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS: What's In The Soundtrack?

Today is a great day. Why? It's Italian film legend Dario Argento's birthday, for one. It also is the same day that you'll get to find out about the soundtrack for The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears, one of the films at the Toronto International Film Festival's Vanguard Programme.

One of the coolest things about Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani's new film is that they use a lot of well-known Italian soundtrack music. What's even cooler is that they listen to this music when they're writing, so having it in the movie is just an extension of their unique vision.

Here is some of the music from the soundtrack to The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears and background about the composers and the original films in which the music appeared.

Composer Ennio Morricone probably needs no introduction, as his career is nothing short of legendary, but here's a few titles to chew on: Once Upon a Time in the West, For a Few Dollars More, La Cage Aux Folles, Revolver, The Battle of Algiers, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (directed by Dario Argento! Happy Birthday!), The Thing, and The Mission.

There are a couple of Morricone pieces on the soundtrack to The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears as well. From the wonderfully titled Lacorta notte delle bambole di vetro a.k.a. The Short Night of the Glass Dolls, his chilling "Il bisturi" is not the kind of music you'd want to wake up to in the middle of the night, especially if you have glass dolls in your room.

"Erotico Mistico" pretty much sounds exactly like what you'd think from the title: drumbeats, Gregorian chant-like singing, and lots of breathy sighing. It's from the 1971 film Maddalena, which tells the story of what happens when a lonely lady meets a lusty priest.

Another imaginatively titled giallo, All The Colours of the Dark, stars the stunning Edwige Fenech (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh) and the not-too-shabby-himself Ivan Rassimov. Bruno Nicolai's score includes "Magico incontro."

                       

Nicolai, who was a friend of Morricone and composed many scores with him, also provided music for Jess Franco films like Count Dracula and Marquis de Sade: Justine as well as 1979's Caligula. Yes, that Caligula.

Wikipedia claims that Guido and Maurizio de Angelis were some of the most prolific Italian musicians in the 1970s, and a glance at their profile on Discogs bears this out. In fact, they even had to use an alternate name "to avoid over-saturating the market." This alternate name was Oliver Onions (I couldn't even make up something this good. Under this moniker, they composed the insanely catchy "Zorro Is Back" theme from the 1975 film version with Alain Delon!)

Here is "Il racket (riprese 1)" from the soundtrack to 1976's Il grande racket, directed by Italian cult film legend Enzo G. Castellari and starring another Italian cult film legend, the awesome Fabio Testi.

Riz Ortolani, who was a jazz composer in the 1950s, was also popular back in the day for his scores for films like House on the Edge of the Park and Cannibal Holocaust, both from 1980. "Cosi Dolce . . . Cosi Perversa" ("So sweet . . . so perverse") is the title theme from the 1967 Umberto Lenzi movie of the same name, starring such legends as Carroll Baker and Jean-Louis Trintignant. Hot!

In 1970, there was an Italian/German film version of The Picture of Dorian Gray called Il Dio Chiatomo, directed by Massimo Dallamano, who lensed A Fistful of Dollars and A Few Dollars More. Carlo Pes and Giuseppe de Luca composed the score, including "Rito a Los Angeles," which borrows the guitar riff from Iron Butterfly's "In a Gadda Da Vida" but adds terrific drums. (It was later used in the soundtrack to Ocean's Twelve.)

 

Nico Fidenco's "My Boundless" originally appeared in Confessions of Emanuelle from 1977 (not to be confused with the other Emmanuelle, who was French). Jonathan Ruskin's synopsis on IMDB is classic:

Famous undercover journalist Emanuelle teams with her friend Cora Norman to uncover a white slave ring that traffics in women kidnapped from various locales around the world. Her investigations leave plenty of time, however, for globe-trotting and bed-hopping. As each lead turns up bad, Emanuelle begins to wonder if she can ever put an end to this horrible slavery ring. 

Won't it be fun to look for this music in The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears? I think so, anyway! Be sure not to miss the film when it screens at the Festival.

THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY’S TEARS Screening Times:

Wednesday, Sept 11th, 6:00 PM THE BLOOR HOT DOCS CINEMA

Thursday, Sept 12th, 9:30 PM SCOTIABANK 3

Saturday, Sept 14th, 12:30 PM SCOTIABANK 8

THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS Poster and Teaser Trailer

Brussels-based filmmaking duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani return to the giallo aesthetics they first explored in their 2009 film Amer in the psychosexual horror The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears. A husband (Klaus Tange) arrives home arrives home from the airport to discover that his apartment is locked from within and his wife is missing. Discovering the circumstances of her mysterious disappearance lead the husband along a surreal path of nightmare and horror.

Below are the poster and trailer for The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears, which plays this year's Toronto International Film Festival within the Vanguard programme.

Further information about Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani's The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears can be found on the Festival website, as well as on the The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears Facebook page and IMDB page.

THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS screening times:

• Wed., Sept. 11, The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema 6:00 PM
• Thurs., Sept. 12, Scotiabank 3 9:30 PM
• Sat., Sept. 14, Scotiabank 8 12:30 PM