Movie Review: Knife + Heart

Knife + Heart *** / *****

Directed by: Yann Gonzalez.

Written by: Yann Gonzalez and Cristiano Mangione.

Starring: Vanessa Paradis (Anne Pareze), Nicolas Maury (Arcihbald Langevin), Kate Moran (Lois McKenna), Jonathan Genet (Guy), Felix Maritaud (Thierry), Khaled Alouach (Nans/Faoud), Noe Hernandez (Jose), Thibault Serviere (Misla), Bertrand Mandico (Francois Tabou).

 

Knife + Heart is an ultra stylish film in the giallo vein that I’m not sure ever really becomes anything other than an exercise in style. There are undeniably ideas throughout the film, but they seem half formed. It’s an odd film – about making gay porn on the eve of the AIDS epidemic (that is never mentioned) – although the lead is a woman. It’s a film that seems to imply that perhaps she is exploiting her actors – many of whom keep turning up murdered. And yet it doesn’t phase the protagonist – who just keeps rolling along, making a movie based on the murders, that are still going on as she films it.

 

And while that may begin to sound that Anne (Vanessa Paradis) is a largely sympathetic character. When we met her, she has been dumped by her girlfriend – Louis (Kate Moran) – who also works as her film editor. Anne is a mess as she tries to convince Lois to take her back – crying constantly on the phone, working up excuses to see her, beg her to take her back. It won’t really work – of course – but Anne keeps trying anyway.

 

As for the murders themselves, the most graphic one is the one that opens the films – which ends a long sequence that begins as they are shooting a porn film, moves into a night club, and ends with someone pretty much literally fucking the actor the death. It’s the type of scene a director puts at the beginning of the film almost as a warning – to let you know what kind of film this is, and have you turn it off before it goes any further. And yet the other murders in the film aren’t nearly as graphic as that on is.

 

Watching Knife + Heart is an odd experience in that I don’t really think that director Yann Gonzalez ever really nails the tone of the movie, and I don’t think he ever builds the proper tension for what is really a horror/thriller/mystery film. His heart seems to be all in the staging of the scenes. Anne’s version of the murder scenes – which take up more time than the actual murders. There is a genuine love of these old gay porn films at the same time is pokes fun at them. When you combine that with the way he creates a community – a family – out of the people making the films, there is a part of the film that feels like it wants to be a gay version of Boogie Nights.

 

All of this sort of undermines the interesting ideas in the film that kind of get the short end of the stick here. We are acutely aware that the AIDS crisis is right around the corner – and that many of these gay men will be put at risk. There seems to be an underlying idea here that Anne is putting the performers at risk by putting them in the films, which will make them targets of the masked serial killer – which we know will come in the next decade. But the idea is undercooked – because Gonzalez overdoes everything in terms of style.

 

And yet, the style works – because the setpieces are expertly crsfted. And the film works because Vanessa Paradis is excellent as Anne – making her into a complex character – the films only complex character. Paradis has always been a talented actress – but I haven’t seen her get a role this good since the film I first noticed her in – Patrice Leconte’s The Girl on the Bridge. Her Anne is an emotional train wreck – but an understandable one.

 

The result is an odd film. It’s not quite the grungy, grindhouse film you would expect to see in a dirty theater, or a beat up old VHS tape. But it’s also not quite the art film you would expect from something that played in the Cannes Official Competition lineup, like this did. It’s not a bad film – it certainly is distinctive. But the whole is less than the sum of its parts.