Knife+Heart : Yann Gonzalez

Prince Charles used to be a porn cinema,

I was whispered in the darkness of its depths. Watching Vanessa Paradis as a porno maestro, directing her youthful red-cheek boys to kneel even lower, to spread their thighs faster, wider.

I could feel my body warming up, on the same seat the man with the bald head and mild dermatitis had left his white stigma, a time as lost as

The hedonistic 80s,

A latex era,

Warm leatherette

Melts on your burning flesh

The mascara falls like an avalanche from your restless eyelids

A decade of glam decadence

The only appropriate backdrop for Yann Gonzalez’s second feature.

It is erotic.

It is dark and it is brutal and it is deeply erotic.

It is rich in colour and it vibrates passion.

All of them running dressed like everyone’s favourite glam party

Or naked.

If only you were as wild

If only we were as cool

As Gonzalez’ voluptuous cast.

It is as weird as it is queer

And without pretentiousness

Or self-deception

But with an understanding of its staggering cultness,

It embraces the kitsch aesthetic, ever so smoothly.

Anne (Vanessa Paradis), is a terribly fragile and perfectly flawed matriarchal figure

With a strong, quite unnerving obsession for her own employee, Loïs

Day and night she is swaying her whip above her recruits’ heads (and bottoms)

Boys with soft curls on their heads

Who fuck each other on camera for, what seems to be, pennies.

But Anne has made herself quite a name in the gay erotic film industry

Transforming her youthful recruits into dazzling stars,

Whose glamour wins the attention of a dark, even.. Inhumane power

They become subjects of a diabolic vengeance which leads them

violently butchered,

With phallic-shaped weapons.

And the murder chase begins,

To steadily vanish the whole film cast.

To sum up:

A queer vampire horror film. With loads of blood and loads of sex.

What is not to love?