‘Knife + Heart’: Vanessa Paradis, M83 & Giallo Style Form An Uneven Ménage [FNC Review]

Style over substance—the eternal struggle waging within genre films. This is a particular challenge for filmmakers who employ genre molds torn out of context (or fallen out of fashion): ‘70s New Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino and more recently, Nicholas Winding Refn. “Knife + Heart,” the second film by French director Yann Gonzalez, struggles to find a balance as he retrofits the Italian giallo formula for “Knife + Heart,” making its Canadian Premiere at Montreal’s Festival du Nouveau Cinéma. The genre pairs well on paper with Gonzalez’s queer sensibilities in this thriller about a leather-clad killer stalking the production of a gay porn film. The results, however, are less thrilling, in a sophomore feature lacking in both ecstatic style and affecting substance.

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“Knife + Heart” takes place in a queer ‘70s Paris stripped of its hetero connective tissue. Anne Parèze (Vanessa Paradis), the producer at the helm of a gay porn studio, is preoccupied with a bad breakup as she puts together the latest production. The problem is, her stars are being murdered in spectacularly violent fashion (among them, Félix Maritaud of “BPM” fame). The culprit is always dressed head-to-toe in black leather, including a gimp mask that exposes his curly hair. With his anonymous look, any of the men on-screen might be the killer, but the answer seems to be embedded in Anne’s waking dreams, which are plagued by negative images of a farmhouse and a fire.

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The action of the film takes place exclusively in LGBT-friendly spaces (well, friendly except for the murderer stalking them): film sets, the editing bay, a secluded forest and a handful of nightclubs. It’s a discreetly surreal choice on the part of the film, but nonetheless a radical one. At the same time, the characters on-screen are exclusively homosexual, or at the very least gay-for-pay in the case of the male performers. A successor to R.W. Fassbinder among others, Gonzalez’s work takes its place alongside French breakouts Alain Guiraudie (“Stranger by the Lake”) and Jérôme Reybaud (“4 Days in France”) and their queer reclamation of spaces and history.

If only “Knife + Heart” wasn’t so bogged down by its influences. It’s a stretch to call Anne a producer of gay skin flicks—a producer of gay skin flick parodies would be more apt. If there was a great deal of research that went into the making of the period thriller, it surely doesn’t show on screen. Likewise, the films that Gonzalez quotes—Dario Argento’s “Opera,” Brian De Palma’s “Body Double” and Michael Powell’s “Peeping Tom,” to name a few—only draw attention to the most surface of pleasures on display, leaving the audience in anticipation of a show-stopping sequence that never comes—the “money shot,” if you will.

Gonzalez again collaborates with M83 for the soundtrack (after his first feature, “You and the Night“), and the French act’s film score is doubtlessly the most in-sync element with this genre throwback’s ambitions. The death sequences in “Knife + Heart” are adequately staged—the dildo switchblade (yes, really) is more over-the-top than any camera movement—but it is M83’s score that brings the set pieces closest to the threshold of being truly memorable. A choice to cross-cut during seemingly every kill from the murder to a parallel event saps the sequences of their tension. It seems the ostentatious register of giallo classics exceeds either Gonzalez or at least his ambition.

There’s no questioning that Paradis nails the look of the Anne character, with a bleached blonde bob that anticipates Michelle Pfeiffer’s character in “Scarface” and thick, colorful makeup in an effort to conceal years of hard living. Otherwise, Paradis lacks the chops to be a compelling scream queen, and Anne’s role in the serial-killer narrative is consistently its least interesting element. Her toxic relationship with the film-within-a-film’s editor, Loïs (Kate Moran) is never convincing, with Paradis unable to sell Anne’s personal demons. The rest of the cast is left to chew chintzy porno scenery, with Nicolas Maury’s flamboyant assistant/performer Archibald making the strongest impression.

The conclusion of “Knife + Heart” is its most satisfying moment, one in which genre conventions and the film’s queerness marry most productively. It is here that Gonzalez seems to remember there is more to the giallo template than black gloves and razor blades. The genre’s popularity is, in fact, a response to right-wing and police state tendencies in Italy in the 1970s; it’s not a stretch to draw comparison between the violence against the characters in “Knife + Heart” to real-life brutalities. In its dénouement, Gonzalez arrives at something greater than stylistic lighting and brutal close-ups, with politics that are more sophisticated and urgent than representation.

If Yann Gonzalez’s objective with “Knife + Heart” is to resurrect the giallo film, the results are middling and satisfying only in spurts. However, judging by the endless output of Italian slashers from home-video labels like Arrow Video is anything to go by, the appetite for the genre is still there. Likewise, as a queer-targeted film, “Knife + Heart” is weighed down by nostalgia, but its gay-centric twist on the giallo template generates a certain degree of goodwill. However, it remains to be seen if Gonzalez can break free of pastiche and write his own stories, or in the future, at least muster the virtuoso acumen required for this kind of genre exercise. [C]