How ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ Uses Neon and Phone Lighting to Fuel Its Hyper-Online Bloodlust
variety.comAnnie Lyons Social media drives the performative interactions of entitled 20-somethings in Halina Reijn’s “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” but beneath their constructed personas, anxiety, fear and jealousy fester.
These intense feelings were at the forefront of cinematographer Jasper Wolf’s mind, who wanted his extensive lighting choices to underscore each “new emotional boxing round.”The A24 film stars Maria Bakalova as Bee, a young working-class woman who accompanies her new girlfriend Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) to a hurricane party thrown by Sophie’s uber-rich friends.
After a murder-in-the-dark game goes wrong when someone turns up dead for real, the toxic group reignites old grudges and descends into cutthroat paranoia.
Much of the action takes place at night after the power — and Wi-Fi — cuts out.While staying grounded in plausibility, Wolf wanted alternative light sources to accentuate the “obvious” flashlights and camping lanterns. “We were mostly interested in maybe an emotional realism or illusionistic realism, that the color of the light could give you an extra thrill or an extra sense [of the characters],” he says.
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