Disappointing Lack of Penis - Review of Knife+Heart
Orignally Posted in 2018
There's a lack of horror movies out there.
Wait.
No.
I mean there's a lack of horror movies starring anyone but straight people.
There. That's it.
It's been a common point of conversation in many queer [queer is used here as a neat, catch-all, for anyone under the LGBTQIA+ banner] leaning horror communities. The perspective that horror is mostly conservative and it comes from a decidedly straight, cis, male lens and if queer people are included at all it's to be either victims of graphic violence or as a punchline. The examples of queer representation has been problematic in most films from trans character Angela in Sleepaway Camp, to Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs or the homocidal May Canady in May, queer characters are mostly villians, crazy or to be feared. If one wants to find positive representation of queer character, one has to scrub films for the odd glance or hint of a taste of "alternative" lifestyles. Podcasts like 'Attack of the Queerworlf!', 'Ghosted by Roz Drezfalez', 'Horny 4 Horror', 'Monsters out of the Closet' and 'Nocturnal Emissions' [run by yours truly] to comb through horror movies pointing out the gay subtext in the films where the context isn't obvious. It leaves queer horror fans wanting, but wanting for good media.
Cut to the present. We are living in the age of "elevated horror" which just means that the sociological subtext of identiy politics, like race, class, and gender are now the subtext of the films. The films are asking the audience to place their own identitiy politics into their interpretation of the films they are watching. Films like the Babadook and the Witch, are asking people to consider the weight of patriarchy on the mental health of women and the role we all play in it. It's not at the background of a film, it's now at the foreground and often one's enjoyment of the film is based on the way that context is interpreted. We are more aware than ever that people's fears are informed by who they are in the world. So the new question is how do you have horror where queer people aren't in it, when queer people have so much to fear in this world?
Which brings me to Yann Gonzalez's 2018 film, Un Cocteau dans le Coeur [English: Knife+Heart]. This film centers on Anne [played by Vanessa Paradis] a producer of gay porn in 1970's Paris, she recently suffers a messy break up with her partner Lois [played by Kate Moran] who is also her editor. Things are very tense between them, heightened by Anne's unwillingness to let go of Lois and her mounting obsession, borderline stalking. Outside of the crumbling relationship are the brutal murders of Anne's former and current actors, and Anne begins to use their deaths as cinematic inspiration. The film is a nostalgic, giallo, style film with Lynchian and De Palmian (it's not a word, but I'm making it one) homages throughout. The characters are oddly beautiful and fascinating to look at, with the male actors in the movie looking like Renaissance paintings of Eros, all curly hair and smooth skin. The other actors, of whom some are playing trans characters, are also gorgeous and aesthetic as though they just popped out of of Gucci ad. The movie is expertly crafted with costume, set design and mood, but not the authentic mood of a period piece but the delicate curation of a person's memory of the time period. One of the stand out performances is Nicolas Maury's Archie, Anne's right hand man who's comedic timing and longing glances make this film volly between ironic horror and dark comedy regularly.
Keeping with the style of a 70's thriller, neither the sex nor the violence is particulatrly graphic, which was disappointing for me. When I hear that there is a French, giallo style horror movie about gay porn stars I expected way more full frontal male nudity. But I am relieved that the violence, while present, is not gorey or gratuitious. There are stabbings, there is a felatio scene that ends in impalement but the killing is shot from the artifice of a movie that looks like a movie you've maybe seen when your parents were asleep. It's obviously over the top, to the point of being slightly rediculous. I won't say that made me comfortable though. While I can't speak for what it is like in France, gay bashing and trans murders are a regular accorance in America. I couldn't help but to wince at each dead, queer character, lying in a pool of their own Kool-Aid colored blood. This is difficult to navigate. People die in horror movies, but what happens when the horror movie is made up of entire groups of queer people? What is the entertainment purpose of watching something that happens, tragically, all the time? Would it be more cathartic to have a queer character kill straight, cis people? Or does that only contribute to the stereotypes of the dangerous, confused, crazy, queer? While I sat in the theatre, I wondered all these things and constantly had to put myself back into the world of the film. I don't have an answer, but it's hard to place this film in the canon with other films that don't exist. I'm going to need more movies like this, more films with queer casts, more films with queer protagonists and antagonists in order to come to a conclusion. It's not possible to evaluate the status of a "good" queer movie when there are so few to reference. We need more films like Knife+Heart. In the meantime, this is a pretty good precedent for future films.
