Kamikaze Hearts

Alternately distressing, instructive, contestable, and fascinating, Juliet Bashore's quasi-documentary plunge into the 1980s porn industry takes an unsparing look at issues of misogyny, drug abuse, and exploitation via the story of two women--the naïve newcomer Tigr and her partner, the magnetic, imperious porn veteran Sharon Mitchell--caught in a toxic romance. By turns mesmerizing and unsettling, Kamikaze Hearts is both a fascinating record of pre-gentrification San Francisco's X-rated underground and an intense, searing love story. The film offers a disturbing glimpse of the modification of bodies, feelings, and lives.