Reviews

This film is pure, distilled, unadulterated boredom. I knew nothing of it before I entered the dark room, took my seat. I was seduced by the "mysterious and suspenseful" blurb on the poster I suppose. Also, Lena Headey is nice and unconventionally sexy, and Richard Jenkins is always a reliable guy to have around, so the cast seemed reasonable. It may have been his name above the title that convinced me to go with this instead of whatever else was on. I should've gone to see Valkyrie for the second time instead.

The thin plot revolves around Headley's Gina McVey, her boyfriend, her father, her sister and her sister's husband who for some reason are being stalked, in a very louche and unenthusiastic manner, by their evil doppelgangers who emerge from mirrors that mysteriously smash. There could be a great film behind this idea (not exactly an original idea, mind you, but still...) and in fact, if the filmmakers had shorn away all the supporting cast and simply stuck to Headey's character's story, The Broken could've made a reasonable 20-minute short. As it is, it is desperately unmotivated and boring, and terribly inconsistent.

For instance, in one scene, a mirror smashes on its own in a room housing all the main characters; they look puzzled but quickly forget about it. In another scene, a mirror smashes in an empty room, and a doppelganger is visible as she "steps out" of the shards left hanging on the wall. So why did the first mirror smash if no creepy crawly was to come crawling out? Just for a little thrill? There are far too many scenes of the characters in the dimly-lit London flats, peering around corners cos they thought they heard something, but seeing nothing there and moving on. We begin to wonder, why doesn't this malevolent doppelgang actually ever want to try to scare them? Scare the characters and you have a chance of scaring the audience. But we, the audience, will need to start threatening each other, in the darkness of the theater, if we want to have any thrills during The Broken. By the way, once we've spent time with these evil doubles, we are totally bemused as to why anyone should be expected to be frightened of them - they just stand around, blank looks on their faces, perhaps totally harmless after killing their others.

There are some nice moods and touches throughout, and I dare say director Sean Ellis could fashion a genuinely stylish and suspenseful mystery movie if he was to hire an imaginative screenwriter next time.

I got to see this movie, despite living in Britain where it is hard to find, because a friend imported the French DVD. I have been a-waiting a long time; I wasn't let down. I've been thinking about it for many days. It has haunted me the way the novel did when I first read it. But it has problems.

Good stuff first? You know all about it. The acting is truly spot on. Argento throws herself into the role with the kind of wild abandon that one would expect of Sarah, her character. The Sprouse twins work wonders in their role/s -- they're least irritating and most heartbreaking child actors I have ever seen. The cameos are most fun to watch, particularly Marilyn Manson. I had no idea Marilyn could appear so weak and pathetic. He's a good actor then. Maybe he should further look into that, since his music career may be declining.

Also, Argento has a great eye. The film's crazy pyrotechnics constantly threaten to become wearing or tedious, but they never do -- every canted camera angle, every stop-motion effect and every speeded-up piece of film is judged just right, impressionistically offering us insight into Jeremiah's soul and his imagination without becoming self-consciously silly. I disagree with the many critics who despise the film's OTT style. I think it's one of it's strong points.

I didn't even mind the ending that much. Of course the brutal, bleak ending of the novel leaves more of a lasting impression, but the film's ending is still downbeat -- Jeremiah's back on the road with his mother, so the abuse and the suffering and the heartache will continue. The novel extended this; in the final of the short stories, we learn that Jeremiah is a broken-down and deeply disturbed wreck when he reaches 15. But the film gives us no reason to think that this won't still be the case.

But yes, there are problems. Sarah's character changes in translation. In the book she was more vicious, more repulsive, but also somewhat deeper. We are given reasons for her rotten behaviour -- she has been conditioned by past violence. This is not even hinted at in the film, where we know nothing of her character's history.

The rape scene, one of the most horrific passages in the book, is oddly glossed-over here, which makes it offensive for all the wrong reasons. What was (not graphically) described in the book as deeply painful, and as something that lasted hours, passes us by quite harmlessly in the film. It joins that trend of recent indie films which try to make paedophilia seem less damaging than it actually is. Or perhaps that isn't so and I'm overreacting. But that's how it seemed to me.

Ultimately, Argento (and Leroy) want us to pity these monstrous characters, presumably because they 'know no better than what they do'. But that won't wash unless we're given some reason to pity them, something other than blind faith. In a film that numbs us with the depiction of adults as child abusers and nothing else, where should our sympathy come from? Are we really supposed to forgive the paedophile's actions because he apologises to Jeremiah after raping and abandoning him? Or is it because the poor poor guy was heartbroken after Sarah dumped him, and just needed some loving attention? No, there must be more. Much much more.

The most important downside is that while we watch the movie through Jeremiah's eyes, we are not given his insight, his commentary, which was for me the most important aspect of the book. We can all imagine what it would be like to be dragged across all of Southern America, watching our psychotic glurmo of a mother screw different violent men when she isn't torturing us, but Leroy's poetic narration, clinging as best as possible to childlike innocence, made it seem all the more horrific and all the more incredible at once. Argento's Heart is Deceitful is a successful film, but it sorely misses Leroy's voice.