THE HEART OF ME (Thaddeus O'Sullivan, 2003)

Jonathan Franzen once wrote, "the only art that's truly suspect, is art that isn't fun." Since we're all familiar with the value of devastating, decidedly unpleasant art (but still understand Franzen's sentiment), perhaps we can amend his statement to 'the only art that's truly suspect, is art that's listless and deadly motherfucking dull.' Case in point is The Heart of Me, the kind of movie that gives cinema a bad name, the kind of movie that thinks just because it has three excellent actors working their asses off (Helena Bonham Carter, Paul Bettany, Olivia Williams), some stunningly plush, richly saturated cinematography and ::heaven help us:: an esteemed literary pedigree (Heart's adapted from Rosamond Lehmann's novel The Echoing Grove), the plot, the characters, the dialogue and everything else has a right to be as generic as fictional filmmaking gets. Here's the logline straight from the production notes: "Two sisters - one marries a man, the other falls in love with him. So begins the game of love." Or rather, so begins the most heinously boring movie I've seen all year. There's nothing inherently wrong with that setup, but since it's about as old hat as aging head garments get, why not try and invest the film (or garnish it, at least) with some tastiness, nastiness, flavor, something? For Christ's sake, why make a movie drier than... a dehydrated man's mouth on a scorching desert night (work with me here, people; it's late and I'm tired)? Why make a movie with a large stick up its anus? Suffice to say, this is the sort of constipated, "prestige production," upper-class-England-in-the-1930s-and-40s shit that makes me wanna take a snooze before the opening credits have even finished rolling. Suffice to say, the filmmakers try and jumble the chronology (undoubtedly as a last ditch effort because they suddenly realized just how painfully tedious their movie is), but the mixed up chronology adds nothing aside from the need for horrendous expositional dialogue (since you don't know what the fuck is going on) which trys to shield the newfound plotting gaps. Suffice to say, characters utter remarks like, "It's terrible what happened to Ricky..." And another replies: "Yeah, who would have thought Ricky would have left the jewelry store walking down Smith St. to the apple grove and after he'd taken but five steps he'd be bombed to death by German airplanes?"
Who needs this trash?

[NB. ThinkFilm is scheduled to distribute in June, 2003.]

Return home.