When I first met her?' I thought she was sleazy, she needed to make a living, she was fucking on camera — I thought she was just another dumb porno slut. But I was wrong...

So begins Kamikaze Hearts — it's a raw story about an impossible relationship between a young woman, Tigr (Tigr Mennett), who becomes obsessed with a beautiful porn star, Sharon Mitchell. From their first meeting Tigr is mesmerized by "Mitch" — by her joie de vivre and flamboyant sensuality. Tigr's life is changed forever when she is drawn under­ ground into Mitch's world, a world of strip­ joint rock and roll, mainlined cocaine, and high-paying commercial sex. Filmed on location in San Francisco, notorious home of the XXX film industry, where North Beach provides an existential backdrop to Tigr's dark odyssey.

Stylistically, Kamikaze Hearts is best described as a dramatic documentary. But this is not a "docu-drama" in the made-for-TV-movie sense, with actors portraying "real people" in "real situations." Tigr calls it a docu-dreama, an intensely personal narrative with real people playing themselves in scenes from their lives. Additionally, a documentary camera crew followed Tigr and Mitch through the produc­ tion of Gerald Greystone's ill-fated sex opera version of Bizet's Carmen. Into the fabric of this eccentric footage, director Juliet Bashore and editor John Knoop have woven a bizarre drama by turns absurd, ironic, ridiculous and simultaneously brutal, disturbing, even tragic.

Kamikaze Hearts resists easy classification. The film draws freely from both documentary and dramatic conventions. It is complicated, stirring and controversial.