Knife + Heart (2018)
As the clunky title suggests, Knife + Heart is part slasher film and part love story. Fans of one genre are all-too rarely fans of the other. But this seemingly incongruous genre mash-up succeeds in lending arthouse style and emotional depth to the grindhouse world of the film’s story and setting.
Paris, 1979: Anne (French actor, singer and mother of Johnny Depp’s kids, Vanessa Paradis), a director of gay-porn films, is desperately trying to reunite with her girlfriend, Lois (Kate Moran). Adding to Anne’s troubles, the actors in her film company are being brutally murdered in especially sexualized ways. As the police seem unwilling to conduct much of an investigation into the murders, Anne begins to investigate on her own – only to discover how the crimes merge with her own violent dreams.
Un Couteau dans Coeur (A Knife in the Heart), as it is known by its original French title, is a beautifully stylized thriller that improves upon director Yann Gonzalez’s previous film, the ponderous and pretentious You and the Night (2013). Whereas the previous film felt like a parody of European art films, Knife + Heart offers a stronger story, better writing, top-form acting and style to spare.
Indeed, there may be too much style here. Gonzalez is nothing if not referential: the opening murder scene harks back to William Friedkin’s Cruising (1980) as though shot by Mario Bava for Blood and Black Lace (1964); the crow recalls any number of ominous “blackbird” films from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) to Dario Argento’s Opera (1987 - if not also the 1994 film The Crow); Anne’s occupation and her negativized dreams make her a double of Faye Dunaway’s character in Eyes of Laura Mars (1978); while the film’s dreamy finale comes right out of Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz (1979).
Knife’s porn-film world setting, which of course recalls Brian DePalma’s Body Double (1984) (DePalma’s Dressed to Kill and Blow Out are reference points here too), gives the film a positively neo-giallo vibe. While it perfectly updates the fashion-house settings of such Italian fare as Blood and Black Lace and Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975), it also mimics the film-studio settings of such neo-giallo films as Berberian Sound Studio (2012) and the wonderful Astron-6 parody The Editor (2014).
Surprisingly, Gonzalez weaves his influences (and I would argue there are many more than the few I’ve detailed here) into a mostly coherent story. But it comes at a price: the elegance of the narrative denies the visceral pleasure that comes with the sleaze and the gore that’s at the real heart of the film.
Gonzalez and co-scripter Cristiano Mangione audaciously thread a devolving and devastating love story into a somewhat formulaic and largely bloodless slasher plot. Each strand seems to frustrate the other, however. The love story is thwarted by a blade that goes from the metaphoric to the literal. (Significantly, this is the only victim who is knifed in the heart – unless “heart” is metaphoric as well.) Even the brutality of the murders are strangely undermined and rendered almost comical by Anne herself in a parody film – brilliantly titled “Homocidal” – where the director is revealed to be the masked murderer (possibly a comment on Argento’s black-gloved hands in his films).
Knife + Heart is at its best and most erotic during the murder sequences. Gorehounds are likely bemoan the lack of blood or Argento-esque stylization and there are some – you know who you are – who prefer their victims to be exclusively female.
While the first two murders are beautifully shot (and lit), the third murder is a particularly impressive set piece. Here, the killer ominously approaches his victim during a series of vertiginous circular pans. The film loses its way after this though. Everything that follows feels anti-climactic: from the pastoral scenes (that tend toward the supernatural, something Gonzalez has a knack for) to the killer’s ultimate capture. By the film’s fourth victim, it’s fair to even feel a bit betrayed.
The porn sequences attract some rather-too beautiful young men (with very un-70s haircuts) and are a little too tastefully shot. Anne’s “third-rate porn” is artier and more suggestive than the sleazy or erotic porn of the day – at least by 70s American gay-porn standards. While Nicholas Maury’s Archibald turns up in drag to drag down his scenes into La Cage aux Folles, the remarkable Félix Marituad spices up his all-too few scenes that only hint at his superb Leo in Sauvage (2018).
Vanessa Paradis is terrific as Anne, though as written, her character’s schizophrenia undermines what is otherwise a genuinely good performance. Anne’s character is based on Anne-Marie Tensi, producer of dozens of 70s-era French gay-porn films, most of which are thought to be lost (although the 70s films of Wakefield Poole and Fred Halstead have recently resurfaced). In fact, Anne’s cinematographer, the aptly-named François Tabou (Bertrand Mandico), is an anagram of François About, cinematographer on some of Tensi’s films and other French gay-porn films.
American actress Kate Moran stands out as Anne’s love interest, Lois. Her brooding but aloof sensuality certainly earns Anne’s obsessive interest. Moran moreover manages to convey Lois’s deep affection for Anne, even in spite of Anne’s destructive and abusive behavior. In a small role, the cadaverous, one-eyed Yann Collette plays the disturbingly austere and disinterested Inspector Morcini (possibly recalling The Bird with the Crystal Plumage’s Inspector Morosini) with menacing panache that adds something nice to the plot - even if it all comes to naught.
Knife + Heart goes out of its way to deliver something a bit more interesting than a genre pleaser. But it promises a bit more than it delivers – as either a neo-giallo or an erotic thriller. In many ways, it is a tease; an interesting premise undermined by unnecessary sentimentality and over-stylization. I wish the director trusted his homoerotic instincts a bit more: his short film Les Iles, or Islands, included on my copy of the Knife + Heart disc, offers something more unique and interesting.
Director Yann Gonzalez is an obviously gifted visual artist who peoples his films with exceptionally good actors who deliver expert performances. Knife + Heart is absolutely worth watching. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stir up enough to be as memorable as it should.
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