London Film Festival 2018: First Look Reviews – The Guilty and Knife + Heart

The Guilty

A few years ago, I said that the acclaimed Locke was essentially radio. Set entirely in a car, with its protagonist having telephone conversations as he drives on into the night, it struck me as something that, whatever its other qualities, imparted nothing extra to us by being presented in a visual format. The Guilty is set entirely in an emergency call centre as Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergren), bored by being tied to a desk job, is finally fired up to try and help when he receives a call from Inger (Jessica Dinnage), who is in a moving car having been kidnapped by her estranged husband. We never cut to Inger, or anyone else on the other end of the many calls Asger makes. Asger seldom leaves his chair, and yet The Guilty, while not the most visually dynamic film you’ll ever watch, isn’t radio with pictures.

Dialogue and performance obviously steal the focus in Gustav Möller’s first feature, as he incrementally doles out backstory about Asger (who has to go to court in the morning, which is why he and his partner have been on desk duty) before Inger’s call comes in, then at strategic moments as Asger is trying to find new ways to help her. Jakob Cedergren is a fine anchor for the film, becoming ever more obsessed with this call, despite initially taking Inger for just another time waster. His performance hits many registers, from the cop who thinks he’s above this job, to genuine, if perhaps overly intense, concern, to a calming influence, to absolutely horror struck. We’re there with Asger every step of the way thanks to Cedergren’s work.

While he and the rest of the cast are great with the dialogue (particular notice must go to Jessica Dinnage, who is deeply sympathetic as Inger), Cedergren also delivers in the quiet moments between phone calls. Often in close up, we see everything play on his face as he wracks his brain for what he can do, who he can call next so he can help to find Inger’s husband’s van out on the road. The pauses are some of the most unbearable moments in the film’s extended exercise in tension, especially when they come suddenly. There is a red light on whenever a call is active, and one moment when we see it suddenly go off as the line goes dead, while it’s simple, is heart in mouth stuff.

Inevitably, though it’s just 85 minutes long, The Guilty does sometimes have to stretch to get to feature length and there are a few elements here, especially involving Asger’s partner, that could be tightened a little further. Still, most of the time it is effectively taut and there are a couple of moments of revelation that hit pretty hard. This may not be the most purely cinematic experience you’ll have at the London Film Festival, but if you’re looking for an unusual thriller it’s worth giving this one a look.

Knife + Heart

Vanessa Paradis in an Argento influenced neo-giallo with a (great) score by M83 and directed by Yann Gonzalez of the band? Seriously, how fast can I sign up?

To say that Knife + Heart sounded like it might be up my street is something of an understatement. I’ve not always been a fan of the neo-exploitation and neo-giallo movements, often because I’ve felt they either wink too hard at us or focus too much on showing their analysis of the genre rather than simply delivering a great example of it, but I’m still always interested in the possibilities. For the most part, I think Knife + Heart strikes that balance well.

Paradis plays Anne, a gay porn director who has just broken up with her longtime girlfriend (Kate Moran). A masked killer begins murdering several of Anne’s collaborators, events she first folds into her new film, Homocidal, then begins to investigate for herself. The plot, while it does eventually add up to something and is at least somewhat engaging, is neither the focus nor the point here. As with any giallo, the story is largely a structure on which to hang imagery and murder sequences. In this respect, Gonzalez starts strong, with an opening sequence that suggests nothing so much as Dario Argento’s Cruising and introduces a pretty novel weapon (which should be used in more than just the first two murders) as well as a very cool looking pure black mask for the killer. As with so much in the film, this sequence is tied up in queerness and kink in a way that feels entirely natural as an evolution for giallo.

The expected visual ingredients are all present and correct, from blood to neon (used especially notably in a naked homage to the opening sequence of Argento’s Suspiria) but what’s more novel is the film’s wit. Gonzalez has a lot of fun sending up his own sequences from within Anne’s Homocidal (which itself has at least one visually striking scene) and every scene with the cast and crew of Anne’s films has at least a few good jokes, not least the recurring appearance of an ‘assistant’ who is simply referred to as ‘golden mouth’. Paradis, whose films don’t often get imported to the UK and US of late, remains a striking presence and Nicholas Maury, as her friend, frequent star and sometime director, is clearly having great fun. The first two acts largely switch between the more traditional giallo scenes and the black comedy of the set. The third act is a little slower as it has a lot of information to dump on us, but Gonzalez delivers it with just as much visual verve as anything else in the film.

Knife + Heart manages to have fun with giallo and deliver a solid example of the genre at the same time. It may not be perfect, but it delivers what it promises.

The Guilty screens in LFF’s Dare programme on Thursday 11th, Friday 12th and Friday 19th of October

Knife + Heart screens in LFF’s Cult programme on Friday 12th and Saturday 13th of October