Bathing in Genre HOMAGE AND EXPERIMENTATION IN PARISH MALFITANO’S BLOODSHOT HEART

Bloodshot Heart is one hell of a title. It’s evocative in a visceral way – in every sense of the word. For me, it calls to mind the image of a swollen heart, its crimson flesh straining against the polluted arterial liquid within: a manifestation of deep emotional scars. It’s a fitting title, then, for Parish Malfitano’s lurid first feature, which debuted at the 2020 Revelation Perth International Film Festival,¹ with all the gory genre grotesquerie its title promises.

Typically, this is the point at which I’d offer up a halfhearted synopsis of the film, but Malfitano’s screenplay isn’t so forthcoming as to lend itself to easy summary. The premise is straightforward enough, I suppose: Hans (Richard James Allen) is a decidedly off-kilter driving instructor whose life begins to veer out of control when he and his mother, Catherine (Dina Panozzo), take in a new lodger, Matilda (Emily David). Beyond that set-up, the particulars of the narrative are obfuscated and muddled by an increasingly oneiric atmosphere that weaves together fantasy and reality so tightly that the two threads become inseparable.

Bloodshot Heart is an experimental film, but don’t be misled into thinking it’s a purely aesthetic exercise. Malfitano is frolicking through familiar genre playgrounds – a little psychological horror here, some thriller characteristics there, completed by a smattering of sexuality and violence – but evinces little interest in catering to audience expectations.

I’m not solely referring to mainstream