The Honeymoon Killers (1970) by Leonard Kastle
“It’s a shock. After I saw the movie I found out that it is the director’s only film, and for me it is a masterpiece. I saw it when I was 24, I went into the theatre because of the pictures -that usually repulse me-, I saw the beautiful black and white, I saw the frame. I came in, I saw the film, and it was a real physical experience -a total experience. I remember sounds, I remember precise shots, scenes, dialogues, I remember many elements. I never saw those two actors again but she is fantastic and he is already announcing Scorsese’s De Niro. And what a way to treat those serial killers: with such humanity! It’s a couple, a great love story, and their crimes come from their fusion, when she can no longer stand it to see him doing the gigolo for old ladies. They start then to poison them and travel through the States. It’s also a wandering in the United States of the Sixties, with a Bonnie and Clyde touch, a wandering magnified by the film, by drama. There is a fake drowning sequence, which is for me one of the greatest scenes in film history. And that fantastic ending, with them sending letters from a prison to another, waiting for their execution, with her going to death with joy, thinking she will join her lover for eternity. We can feel all her frustrations, her hate of her own body, the way she turns into a monster. Everything is there, everything is said about humanity.”

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An artist with multiple talents, Damien Odoul is a poet, a director and a performer. He received in 2001 the Special Prize of the Jury in Venice for his second film Deep Breath then he directed Errance in 2003, En attendant le déluge in 2004 and The Story of Richard O. starring Mathieu Amalric in 2007. He’s just directed a video clip for the song Private Lily by French band Moriarty. Watch it here on Daily Motion.