Kamikaze Hearts

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.