Austinist Movie Review: The Heart is Deceitful (And Disjointed)
We’re a little morbidly fascinated with JT LeRoy — not because we like overwrought coming-of-age stories, but because we love hoaxes. Similarly, we’re a little fascinated with Asia Argento — not because we like self-important starlets, but because we love the cult of celebrity. So, when the two came together to produce the film version of LeRoy’s second novel, we have to admit, we were intrigued. We didn’t expect The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things to be good so much as we expected it to be interesting.
Our expectations for the film were more or less dead on: Argento’s adaptation of LeRoy’s thinly-veiled autobiography (we’re just not sure how to refer to the autobiography of a fictitious person) is interesting, but not all that great. Little Jeremiah (Jimmy Bennett) gets yanked out of his foster home by his teenaged mother Sarah (Asia Argento), a nightmarish woman who looks not unlike Courtney Love in meltdown. Dragged across the dirty South, from truck stop to meth lab to who knows where, alternately abused, molested and neglected, Jeremiah really has a hell of a time. When his mother ditches him, Jeremiah winds up with his God-fearing grandparents, trained to preach the good word in the town square in his Sunday best. But, of course, the nightmare isn’t over yet and Sarah scoops him up yet again.
This is not a film for the faint of heart. Nor, really, is it a film for anyone with high expectations. Argento does show some promise as a director, demonstrating a good understanding of composition and color and extracting some rather exceptional performances from the children who play Jeremiah. At times, the whole thing felt a little David Lynch or Todd Haynes circa Velvet Goldmine. The all-star ensemble backing up Argento, Bennett and Cole and Dylan Sprouse (the twins play the middle-school-aged Jeremiah) adds some major zip. Check out Winona Ryder as a highly-caffeinated social worker and Peter Fonda as Jeremiah’s Bible-thumping grandpa.
However, the cinematography and acting don’t really compensate for the jumbled, meandering storyline. As audience members, we’re never sure where the film is going, and the film’s construction doesn’t really indicate that the author’s were either. Although the horror does seem to escalate for the first third of the movie, after a while, we just knew things were going to get progressively worse for no apparent reason. That may or may not be life, but it sure isn’t very good narrative structure.
The movie seems to take place in a drag version of America where everything is too much and over the top. Of course, Jeremiah’s grandfather makes him wear a suit every day and keeps TestaMints in his desk, and of course his mother works as a truck stop prostitute while living in her boyfriend’s rig — that’s just how things are in LeRoy’s nightmare imaginary.
The film’s web site has a lot of interesting information, including a timeline of the unraveling of the JT LeRoy hoax.
And, if you’re so inclined, you can catch The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things tonight and tomorrow night at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar at 9 p.m. Also, for the record, they made some really rad t-shirts for the film, and we're not just saying that because we look good in pink.
[Image from www.asiaargento.it]
