User Reviews

Family tie is a good hook for drama, especially if the two main characters are pretty endearing. The cast, albeit small, perform admirably to set strangely surreal characters. However, this is a simple story told in excessively cumbersome way, the slow pace and mundane script prevent any excitement from the first half, and even when it looks like it would gain momentum, it doesn't end up in satisfying conclusion.

May (Jessica Biel) finds her long lost sister Shiva (Zosia Mamet), but their lives are world apart. It's basically the entire premise and there are not many twists or shocking developments. What the movie does well is presenting these two sisters with modesty. Jessica Biel and Zosia Mamet look the part of siblings, they also have a good on-screen connection. Their relationship is heart-warming and even thought-provoking at times.

However, the movie takes a very sluggish approach. This may necessary to build up characters, yet the scenes tend to get tedious early on. Some interactions feel repetitive, such as the sisters' banters, which might be adorable but it can be quite overused, the abusive boyfriend who constantly bullies them and shallow use of alternative life style. It needs about one hour to get the momentum rolling, and it's still imperfect then.

Edi Gathegi and Joe Anderson play the male supporting characters, they do a presentable job considering their personalities are not as deep as the sisters. This is a drama through and through, it may turn into thriller slightly, although it doesn't know what to do when it gets there. The theme of violence or rape could be used more thoroughly instead of being another uncomfortable gimmick. It only partially succeeds in displaying female empowerment.

There's a delightful drama at heart with the sisters, yet the extremely sloppy pace and one dimensional direction only amount to mediocre showing. .

I started watching this movie with great expectations. Remembering Jessica Biel in "The Truth About Emanuel" was one main reason for that. I enjoyed her performance and the physical resemblance of needed by the role. The plot although did not allowed her to demonstrate full talent. The performance of Zosia Mamet did not make me believe her character either. I am not familiar with her work in television. Her choice for the role was probably dictated by her physical appearance needed for the role. Since the plot was simple the character development should have been deeper. At least as much as it is needed to make me feel the pain of the "bleeding heart".

"Bleeding Heart" is the perfect title for this well-performed yet underwhelming indie offering.

May is the sensitive yoga teacher and the bleeding heart of the film's title. She has reconnected with her long-lost half-sister Susan (Shiva), and the experience is transformative for May. She becomes obsessed with Shiva who is a "sex worker" in a relationship with her abusive pimp, Cody. The out-of-control May casts away all pretenses of the healing properties of yoga and turns vigilante in order save the helpless Shiva.

One loses any sympathy for May when she turns on her well-intentioned boyfriend Dex, gives $1,000 of their hard-earned money to Shiva, then disrupts the life of her mother in Santa Barbara.

The film lapsed into comedy when May storms into the home of "Lonely Ed," who has hired Shiva for the night. The "trick" is interrupted when May holds Lonely Ed at gunpoint, then handcuffs him to his bed.

An even more preposterous finale occurs in Santa Barbara. By the end, there is not a lot of "Namaste" left for May, who is now a gun for hire ready at moment to tell her enemy, "Go ahead! Make my day!"

If you're coming to this film because you enjoy the actresses, you won't be disappointed, because they give strong, thoughtful performances. An English actor unknown to me, Joe Anderson, is particularly strong in the limited role of an abusive boyfriend. Eli Gather is an ingenious choice in the other central role as May (Jessica Biel)'s boyfriend. A fifth role is woefully underdeveloped: Kate Burton plays May's mother, but she isn't given enough material to shade the portrait of psychological control she exerts over her daughter.

The story is cleanly laid out: May is a yoga instructor who lives with her boyfriend Dex in a residential studio that hosts the classes May leads. We first see her exploring the information that she has a biological sister from a mother she never knew: This is Shiva (Zosia Mamet), a "sexy massage" worker who lives with boyfriend, the psychotic Cody (Anderson). What's best about this noir representation of upper middle class and lower class L.A. are the scenes director Diane Bell writes for the May and Shiva as they reluctantly meet, go to a bar, and slowly, as they drive around (we need to see more of these locales) learn about the other, before May takes her home, where they meet the cautious, almost superciliously straight Dex, who has May on a tight leash he's only partly ready to admit exists between them -- these scenes make you aware of the possibility of borderline personality disorders the two central female characters share in their creepy relation with their boyfriends, who seem in other ways entirely opposite. The script, which results in an 84 minute film, needs to develop how the social scenes the characters belong in offer resistances to who they imagine they might be, but Bell has created a chamber piece for five characters, with three locations: Shiva and Cody's apartment (which includes a gun -- okay, that's a tired trope), May and Dex's studio, and the Santa Barbara house May and Shiva flee to when Cody almost immediately becomes possessive of his "girlfriend's" new sister. The three locations are crucial to the drama, but they don't allow the characters enough space to act out versions of who they are and what their developing relationships might mean.

Mamet's Shiva is a bit of a sludge: She doesn't seem to pick up on the possibilities this latent sister offers her (where is the discussion of May's spiritual practice? How else are we to understand it?), but rather siphons off the energy others project in her, and what's that all about? The film (perhaps channeling May too closely) circumspectly denies to us the representation of how Shiva goes about her job, so that the sex worker milieu becomes almost a fantasy projection of the audience's interest in the actresses. This strikes me as an impoverished craft decision on Bell's part. Mamet seems almost to be fantasizing a sex worker, but is stronger in her work with Biel's May, and Anderson's Cody. Biel, however, is suited very well to play the highly controlled, "bleeding heart" May, whose every thoughtful decision seems to leave her farther from a life that would sustain the soulfulness her yogic work projects for her. Bell shrewdly shows how cold is this life May and Dex have made with each other, and what might be at stake in May's escape from it. Biel shows us the fragility of that life West Coast spiritualism promises its adherents, and the price it pays in the beauty it so easily affords.

The cost is finally tragically high for May. It's a spare and understated close, but it satisfies our expectations.

I liked this film. The understated first half only helps the plot becomes more interesting, further on. Also, I was stunned to see Harry Hamlin. He was in one of the worst films ever made that included Sir Laurence Olivier: "Clash of the Titans" (1981). It was legendary bad! Anyway, the 4 primary characters in this film are quite good. I definitely recommend it.

I don't often write 'formal' reviews of films I watch here, mostly because I am lazy. However, due to the current reviews out there that led me to watch this film to begin with I have to comment on it: My review of 'Bleeding Hearts': This movie was held out to be a reckoning point for women in prostitution. It has been said that Mamet's performance was the quintessential definition of a woman accepting herself for what she is and not caring what anyone else thinks about her. (who only had like 4 lines relating to how she actually felt about it).

After watching the film, however, I would like to disagree on several key points. Though Mamet's performance was definitely noteworthy, it had nothing to do with her profession as an on-again off-again 'massage' therapist.

This was a story of a woman caught in a shitty relationship with an abusive partner. A story that is far to common in real life. To reduce the plot to simply a story of a woman trapped in prostitution and looking for a way out is not only insulting to both Mamet and Biel, who were great in this, not to mention the writer, but, I think, also misses the larger message of the entire film itself, which is: that no matter what you think, if you are in an abusive relationship, there is always a way out, even if you can't see it yourself. This is definitely a film worth watching.