Knife+Heart (2019)

In French this movie is called Un Couteau dans le Cœur (a cut in the heart), but they're distributing it in the U.S. as Knife+Heart, which I think is quirky and pretty great. Knife+Heart is very gay, totally fucking weird, and occasionally violent (uncomfortably so) in the extreme. I was obviously into it.

A director of blue movies in 1979 has been abandoned by her lover, and then a psychopath begins murdering the actors from her porn films. The film is campy but also serious, and the second act takes place almost entirely in a forest, where the protagonist contemplates the questions of existence. This second act is paced differently, shot differently, and one almost forgets about the sexualized serial murders for a while.

But this is a movie about gay desire, violence, the violence adjacent to gay desire, and much more. It has three separate endings, and each of the endings cemented my affection for the film more than the last.

(I never saw Yann Gonzalez's other movie that was distributed in the U.S. – You and the Night – but I sure am going to now.)