True Romance: Kamikaze Hearts

Juliet Bashore’s Kamikaze Hearts, originally released in 1986 and now set to screen in a new 2K restoration by the UCLA Film & Television Archive (May 13 in NYC at BAM and May 20 in LA at Alamo Drafthouse with a nationwide rollout to follow), is a mesmerizing time capsule of the San Francisco porn industry in the 80s, told through the toxic romance of two star-crossed lesbian lovers. It was an era defined by a Hollywood-conjured president, busily selling trickle-down snake oil to the masses while blithely ignoring a fast-moving epidemic (that would go on to kill well over 30 million). None of which is explicitly addressed in Kamikaze Hearts, but rather looms like a boom mic hovering from above offscreen.

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