Rating: ****
Starring: Vanessa Paradis, Nicolas Maury, Kate Moran
Summer of Paris, 1979; gay pornographer Anne Parèze (Vanessa Paradis) is terribly reeling from her recent breakup with her lover and editor Loïs (Kate Moran) and will soon have her wits and compassion tested when one of her actors, out one night to celebrate his latest film, was found killed at a leather and jockstrap bar. Initially unshaken by the news, Anne is instead inspired by the atrocity to create her most ambitious project, a pornographic murder thriller called Homocidal. This, of course, sparks disgust from some of her co-workers who are outraged by this exploit, as well as worry from the rest as their number starts to suspiciously drop like flies the more they proceed with the filming. It wasn't until Anne gets an encounter with a masked figure that she starts to take this personally, but at that point, could it all be too late?
Drenched in neon glow and electronic synth, Knife + Heart (2018) strives to get the feel and look of an early 70s Mario Bava giallo fashioned around a stylized underbelly of pre-AIDS crisis France where sex and drugs were norms to be explored and enjoyed. With this, one would expect an exploitative sharp-edged horror thriller full of gore and explicit smut but, surprisingly with some softcore visuals and campy elements, the movie instead worked through its casts to tell its story and the result is a melancholic yet strangely warm mystery with a modest bodycount and broken sympathetic characters.
This is far from claiming Knife+Heart is a tamed beast, mind you, as much of the exploitative elements can still be seen around the first act where the film feels greatly like an adult slasher/giallo hybrid. A notable pair of rather brutal dispatches around this act have strong sexualized feel to them, juxtaposed only with enough stylized editing, camera work and scoring for an arthouse finish that kept the film decently away from being labeled as a simple yet violent erotica trash, but as the movie progresses into its second act which focus more on Anne's personal investigation on the killings, the direction have the murders parked back to let the story focus more on our lead's amateur snooping, as well as finding and fighting off her own personal demons.
It is around this part of the plot that the film dove into cheesier territories that honestly felt too fantastical compared to what's already happening and I'm not just talking about the spiritual symbolism that got chucked in for the film's need for sophisticated babbling, or that random genetic diseases given to some random guy just to give him monster claws. Basically, there's hint that Anne have some sort of connection to the killer and it has something to do with a dream-like vision of a burning house she's been getting throughout the film. It is eventually explained what this burning house is alluding to, but I find this reveal awfully weak since it just sounded and felt too coincidental to earn any solid hold.
On the other hand, the reveal did gave the killer a sympathetic backbone as, without spoiling much, it ties strongly to their motive as to why their going after Anne's filming crew. It is difficult to follow for a while as you work the pieces together but once the emotional finale runs its course, you can't but feel a tad sorry for the masked slasher considering what they have gone through.
Frankly, despite the convoluted nature of its mystery, Knife + Heart still works well enough as a horror movie thanks to Gonzalez’s and Mangione’s excellent scripting, making our queer characters little like the usual gay caricatures seen in these types of films and more like actual people with shades of insecurities and a need to feel loved and belonged. This could have been explored further with an edge seeing that the movie did hinted some drama regarding social injustices against queer communities but the normalized treatment dulled the blade enough to the point this indifference more or less could be dropped. Might be a good thing for some but I feel this was a missed opportunity to give some of our characters more angles to develop with.
Definitely for mature audiences for all of the boundaries considered and broken, with some good humor thrown in from time to time to keep the film far from being too serious and gloom, Knife + Heart (2018) is a surprisingly intriguing queer slasher that promises thrilling murders, wholesome laughs and genuine heartbreak. Not everybody's cup of tea, but a definite keeper for genre fanatics!Bodycount:
1 male repeatedly stabbed in the rectum with a bladed dildo
1 male unknowingly fellates a bladed dildo, knifed through the head
1 male repeatedly knifed on the back
1 male caught on fire (flashback)
1 male found bleeding to death from a cut throat
1 female knifed on the chest
1 male knifed to death
Total: 7
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