Film

Kamikaze Hearts (1986)

Director: Juliet Bashore

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Bashore's gritty, grimy film about the porn industry and the status of women within it continually throws the audience up against problems of interpretation: sometimes the camera is a coolly discriminating, independent viewpoint, sometimes a goggling, peeping eye. The peg the film hangs on is the relationship between lithe, gorgeous porn star Sharon Mitchell and doggedly devoted Tigr, her lover and director; the viewer's sympathy switches nervously back and forth between the two women. Mitch is a shameless camera-hog, rabbiting on about joy and fulfilment through porn; Tigr is superficially less flaky, but collapses dramatically in the harrowing last scene. There are moments of humour, and the glimpses of the porn movie set enthral; but the film belongs to the frighteningly blank Mitch, who has clearly been turned inside out and torn in the process. A tough cookie who's also a figure of supreme availability, she embodies the contradictions explored in the film.

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