The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (2004/2005)
"I love this film. I honestly love
this film." - J.T. Leroy in an e-mail read at SXSW
2005
Watching "The Heart is Deceitful
Above All Things" is sort of like watching a ping
pong match. Here we see a young boy, Jeremiah, pushed
back and forth between an uncaring foster care system
and his junkie, whore mother. This oscillating custody
memoir was penned by J.T. Leroy, a 24 year old male
cult author who dresses like a woman. The film was
lensed by Italian horror film master Dario Argento's
daughter Asia (pronounced Oz-E-Ah).
Perhaps it is because it is made
by a female that this film just doesn't feel risky
and daring enough. Yes, throngs of people who watch
it will come away telling you it is depressing, harsh,
strong and not easy to watch. You'll note that most
of these are mainstream people and women. This film
may knock on the doors of bizarre, disgusting craziness,
evoking the harsh realities of drug abuse, prostitution,
child abuse, and white trash squalor, but this simply
is not enough. It really needs to kick the fucking
door wide open.
A perfect example of this film's
inability to be daring comes when Argento, playing
the junkie, whore mother here, takes her 11 year old
son and dresses him up like a girl, putting him in
a white frilly dress and make-up. After she leaves,
the young boy seduces his mother's boyfriend (played
brilliantly by Marilyn Manson). But the filmmakers
are either unable to talk the young boys playing the
character (twins Cole and Dylan Sprouse who have their
own Disney Channel series starting this Spring) into
performing the act of seduction as a girl in the film
or they feel afraid to subject a young actor to doing
such a scene and, instead, Argento performs the scene
herself. To be sure, the film is edited wonderfully
and filmed so perfectly that we understand this is
the boy doing the seducing, we are led to believe
that he is emulating his mother, wanting to be his
mother, so it is acceptable that the actress playing
his mother play him. But it's also a total cop-out.
It takes the film away from being edgy and bold and
makes it seem "artsy" and "safe." This film should
never seem artsy and safe.
To be sure, Argento is a magnificent
storyteller. The sets here are amazing. The ideas
here are strong. There's a scene where the boy vomits
on the car windshield and that vomit is there in every
subsequent scene. Argento has a real talent for verisimilitude
in many of the scenes. The meth lab, the filthy apartments,
the dumpsters, all of these locales are realistic
and harrowing. Likewise, when the film moves into
police stations, hospitals, and supposedly safe surroundings,
the images are just as perfect.
The acting is wonderful as well.
Jimmy Bennett as young Jeremiah (age 7) is simply
perfect. This kid is amazing, one of the most talented
young actors I've ever seen. He has to endure a scene
where he has surgery after being anally raped and
a belt-whipping scene and he is as brilliant in these
difficult scenes as he is in the more cerebral ones.
Likewise, the Sprouse twins are equally adept at performing
their roles. That one of them (or maybe even both)
has the courage to dress up like a little girl and
perform in this role is simply astonishing. Perhaps
that is why it is so disheartening that the film doesn't
go just a step further. These talented young actors
are obviously brave enough to undertake the performance.
Why are they not allowed to do so wholly?
Also of note in the film is Peter
Fonda as a religious patriarch, John Robinson (of
Gus Van Sant's "Elephant") as a twinky little religious
gay boy, Michael Pitt (wasted in a minor role) as
a retard, Kip Purdue, Ben Foster, and the aforementioned
Manson as various boyfriends. Winona Ryder is perfect
as a idiotic children's social worker and Argento
herself is quite good as the nutty mother. Looking
like Uma Thurman playing Courtney Love, Argento somehow
manages to steal her own movie, amazing us with the
fact that she actually directed and starred in this
film.
But in the end, this film just isn't
daring enough. And it's plot soon becomes tiresome
as we have no hope for the main character other then
to get frustrated and shout out at the screen for
someone to intervene on his behalf. This never happens.
We see nothing more than a tug of war in the plot
here, one the insane mother always wins. The only
other options is the equally disillusioning strict
grandparents who get involved only once to try and
help the young boy. Their intervention is no more
helpful than the crazy mothers. Watching a little
boy torn back and forth between two extremes soon
grows tiresome. I would have liked this film to move
on to the character's teenage years and get into something
more psychologically complex.
Perhaps it was that fact that I
had seen the equally squalid "A
Hole in My Heart" just two nights before that
"The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things" seemed so
lame and riskless to me. I also just finished reading
Augusten Burroughs' "Running with Scissors," another
story about a young gay boy brought up by an insane
mother. Although less harrowing in many ways, "Scissors"
(which is scheduled to be made into a 2006 movie by
"Nip/Tuck" creator Ryan Murphy) is much more intricate
and interesting. "The Heart is Deceitful Above All
Things" just left me wanting more; more daring scenes,
more risk taking, more story, and more emotion. Perhaps
when we get to a sequel, and young Jeremiah is a teenager,
the story will seem a lot more interesting.
Notes:
Also with Lydia Lunch and Jeremy
Sisto.
Dedicated "For Jean-Yves Escoffier.
The film premiered at Cannes in
2004. It's First USA screening was at the AFI Film
Festival in October of that year. The film did not
appear in release abroad until 2005 and currently,
to the best of my knowledge, does not have a U.S.
distributor.
Viewed at SXSW in March of 2005.
