The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things

Asia Argento seems to have gone to the Harmony Korine school of filmmaking, peppering The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things with unpleasant characters and unintelligible sequences. While Argento’s style is admittedly the best thing about the film – there are a lot of instances here in which the visuals are far more intriguing than anything else – it’s not enough to disguise the inherently repellent nature of this story. The film casts Argento as Sarah, a sleazy former prostitute who has just regained custody of her son Jeremiah – though it’s clear that she’s in no state to be raising a child (she convinces Jeremiah that he’ll be crucified if he attempts to go back to his foster parents). In terms of creating a world that looks convincingly seedy and reprehensible, Argento has undoubtedly succeeded. But there’s absolutely no flow to the film’s screenplay – which is based on a series of short stories by J.T. LeRoy – as it lurches from one vignette to the next, without any thought to keeping the audience engaged. The many oddball celebrity cameos (Winona Ryder, Peter Fonda, etc) quickly prove more distracting than anything else, while the film becomes increasingly incoherent as it progresses. Argento might one day make a good film – this certainly isn’t it.

* out of ****