Knife + Heart

(2018)

Yann Gonzalez • 110 minutes • France

Knife + Heart (2018)
Yann Gonzalez
110 minutes, France
DCP

French spoken
English subtitles

Sunday, 28-07
22:00
Drijvend Paviljoen

As part of our Same Same but Different program, you can also watch Tenebrae (1982) in LantarenVenster for the Giallo Psycho’s special.

“Set in the 70s Paris, Vanessa Paradis plays an alcoholic gay porn director whose actors are slowly being slaughtered by a serial killer.”

The premise of Yann Gonzalez’s second feature film, Knife + Heart, is too good to be true: Vanessa Paradis plays Anne, a lesbian, alcoholic businesswoman and film director of gay porn movies. She runs her own production company. Although at times she seems to be somewhat lost in private affairs, she is doing a wonderful job. That’s until her actors slowly start dying horrible deaths, murdered by, what seems to be, the same serial killer. The police appears uninterested in solving the case, so Anne takes it upon herself to investigate the murders.

Knife + Heart is an homage to gay porn of the 70’s – full of gay bars, night clubs, dark rooms and gay cinemas – and Giallo cinema, Italian slasher movies known for their incredible soundscores. Shot on 16 mm with exhilarating colours the film is a stylish pleasure for the eye. And also for the ear, because as if there weren’t enough surprises: the soundscore was composed by the band M83, whose member Anthony Gonzalez is director Yann Gonzalez’s brother.

Because the film reminded us of Italy’s giallo cinema, we screen in a special program Same Same but Different: Giallo Psychos together with Dario Argento’s Tenebrae (1982).