While Claire Denis is in prep mode for next month’s ‘Crying of the Guards,’ shoot, she’s already set up her next film after that one, and it might bring Denis back to the genre cinema of 2001’s “Trouble Every Day.”
Denis is set to direct the cannibal crime thriller “The Soap Maker,” an updated remake of Italian director Mauro Bolognini’s 1977 movie “Gran Bollito,” which starred Shelley Winters as a serial killer who cooked the bodies of her victims into soap, cake and cookies (via Variety).
Bolognini’s film was itself based on real-life serial killer Leonarda Cianciulli. Producers have acquired rights to both the original film and Cianciulli’s diaries which she “wrote in the psychiatric prison were she spent the rest of her life after confessing her crimes.”
Denis’ project is being shopped around at EFM Berlin, but most intriguingly, producers are pitching the film as being in the same vein as “Silence of the Lambs,” “Se7en,” and “Get Out.”
A few years back, Denis, 79, had mentioned that her Cannes-premieres “Stars at Noon” could be her final film amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Obviously, that plan did not work out. She’s now set up to shoot two films, potentially back-to-back.
Denis is, arguably, France's most globally acclaimed living female director. Her notable works include “Chocolat,” “35 Shots of Rum,” “Beau Travail,” “The Intruder,” and “White Material.”