Film Review
With his second feature,
Un couteau dans le coeur (
Knife + Heart),
up-and-coming director Yann Gonzalez indulges his ardent passion for slasher
thrillers of the 1970s with a wild abandon - and quite a few gallons of theatrical
blood. The gloriously über-stylised
giallos from such Italian
masters of the genre as Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci were Gonzalez's main
starting point, although the influence of various American filmmakers (notably
Brian De Palma) can also be felt in a full-throttle homage-cum-parody that
manages to be both viscerally shocking and irresistibly hilarious - roughly
in equal measure.
Gonzalez's first full-length film passed almost without notice, although
his subsequent short
Les Îles took took the Queer Palm at Cannes
in 2017. The fact that his latest feature was honoured with the 2018
Jean-Vigo Prize for best feature (shared with Jean-Bernard Marlin's hard-hitting
urban drama
Shéhérazade)
augurs well for an independent filmmaker of undoubted flair and chutzpah.
Un couteau dans le coeur could easily pass for an over-indulgent pastiche
of the kind of trashy horror flick that went out of fashion in the 1980s, but
it is actually considerably more than this - as becomes readily apparent
if you make the effort to look beneath its kitsch-encrusted surface.
This is a film that ingeniously employs the lurid tropes of the 1970s slasher
movie in a way that compels us to look inwards and ask ourselves just why
we are drawn to this pretty demeaning species of lowbrow entertainment.
What is it about horror movies, particularly those of an exploitation
bent, that fascinates us so much? Can it be that they express something
about our true nature - our repressed desires, our darkest neuroses - that
no other form of cinematic art can reach? Beyond the spurious titillation
of seeing anonymous characters menaced, attacked and brutally slain by a
mysterious masked figure (whose weaponry includes a dildo fitted with a retractable
blade), what is there but the compulsion to see into our own souls and discover
a part of our identity that truly appals us?
According to Gonzalez, his film was inspired by the real-life story of
Anne-Marie Tensi, a producer of low-grade gay pornographic films who had
some success in the 1970s. By all accounts, she had a fiery nature
and became a alcoholic, her career and personal life both jeopardised by
a stormy love affair with her editor Loïs Koenigswerther. In Gonzalez's
film, Vanessa Paradis models her portrayal on biographical accounts of Tensi,
treating us to what is possibly the most complex and convincing of her screen
roles to date.
Starting out as an international pop singer and supermodel, Paradis embarked
on a screen career in the late 1980s and, having worked with some notable
directors - Patrice Leconte (
La
Fille sur le pont), Pascal Chaumeil (
L'Arnacoeur), Anne Le Ny (
Cornouaille)
- she has proven to be a very capable actress. One of the strengths
of
Un couteau dans le coeur, and the thing that most adequately compensates
for its stylistic excesses and lack of original plot, is Paradis's intensely
believable portrayal of a middle-aged career woman's desperate attempts to
hold her life together as her world falls in around her.
Vanessa Paradis's dazzling turn is complemented by strong supporting contributions
from Nicolas Maury, highly entertaining as an outrageously flamboyant soft
core porn director, and Kate Moran, the main character's over-demanding girlfriend.
Also cropping up in this shameless orgy of cinematic self-referencing are
Romane Bohringer, Ingrid Bourgoin and Jacques Nolot, all of whom lent their
support to some notable gay-themed French movies of recent decades (respectively
Les Nuits fauves,
Simone Barbès ou la
Vertu and
La Chatte à deux têtes).
For all its uninhibited kitsch artistry and gore-spilling excesses,
Un
couteau dans le coeur is a stunning film d'auteur that reeks of art-house
sophistication (and possibly a whiff of overblown self-importance).
The colour-saturated visuals and opulent mise-en-scène are a tad off-putting
at first but gradually these work on our senses and what ultimately emerges
is a peculiar baroque poetry that is fleetingly evocative of what we find in the
more fantastic cinema exploits of Jean Cocteau and Georges Franju.
Watched as a conventional schlock thriller from a bygone era, the film has
limited appeal beyond its obvious over-egged nostalgia value, but this is
to do it a great injustice. By allowing his creativity and humour to
run riot, Yann Gonzalez creates a cinematic gem that is not only a thoughtful
deconstruction of a once popular sub-genre, it also serves as an inexplicably
alluring piece of film art that reaches deep into our psyche and reveals
to us something about our selves that is far more unsettling than what it
depicts on screen.
© James Travers 2019
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
In the late 1970s, Anne Parèze is a 40-something producer of low-budget
porn movies based in Paris. As her career wanes, she turns to drink
and becomes increasingly emotionally unstable. Her fragile state of
mind is not helped when her partner of ten years and trusted film editor,
Loïs, suddenly walks out on her. In a desperate bid to win back
her girlfriend, Anne commits herself to producing her most ambitious film
so far, and in this venture she hopes to be supported by her loyal director
friend Archibald.
These plans look as if they might be well and truly scuppered when a mysterious
masked killer enters the fray and begins committing a series of grisly murders.
The only thing that connects the unfortunate victims is that they have all
worked on Anne's films. When the police prove to be incapable of resolving
the mystery, Anne embarks on her own investigation whilst preparing her next
film. By laying a trap she hopes to force the killer into revealing
his identity, but in doing so she only succeeds in making it easier for him
to strike again...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.