This is a Spout Mavens review (#2). For more information, read here.
This film is based on a memoir by J. T. LeRoy. Except that J. T. LeRoy was discovered to be a pen name for writer Laura Albert, and the book billed as a memoir was actually an elaborately written hoax (complete with a public persona posing as transsexual LeRoy), and Asia Argento directed and starred in the adaptation of the hoax to screen. Asia plays Sarah, an unstable, single mother, who appears to derive her income from prostitution and who gave up her child, Jeremiah (initially played by Jimmy Bennett), to foster care. The film opens as Jeremiah is being dropped off to his mother by his foster parents, as he cries and pleads for them not to do so. Jeremiah has grown to love his foster parents, and Sarah is nothing but a stranger to him. While Jeremiah rails against his mother's would-be affections, she essentially emotionally abuses him into trusting her, telling him that his foster parents never loved him, and that she'll torture him if he runs away. Scared into submission, Jeremiah quietly accepts his new circumstances. All the while, Sarah feeds her young child drugs and exposes him to a revolving door of step-fathers and quasi-serious boyfriends. The first in the string molests Jeremiah when Sarah runs out on him during their honeymoon, and he leaves Jeremiah for dead, until authorities find him, nurse him to health, and remand him to the custody of his grandparents (his grandfather is played by Peter Fonda). Except that they are fundamentalist Christian, particularly strict, and engage in corporal punishment bordering on abuse for the slightest of infractions. Though Jeremiah (now played by Dylan and Cole Sprouse) adjusts to this new home life, being the most stable since his foster home, Sarah finds him and kidnaps him, taking him with her and her new husband in their semi-truck while she strips to make money. Sarah also takes pleasure in dressing young Jeremiah in girl's clothing, which invites more abuse on the part of a later boyfriend (played by Marilyn Manson - without makeup!). As Jeremiah struggles to make sense of his ever-changing and endangering circumstances, Sarah's mental instability at the hands of drugs and sexual disease deteriorates, and Jeremiah is left to fend for himself and his mother when faced with the prospect of having nowhere else to go.
I watched this film a week ago, struggling for the wherewithal to write a non-biased review, but no matter how I attempt to analyze this film, I find that I am unable to take off the Jill Q. Viewer hat and evaluate this film on its artistic merit. The film was graphic and depicted subjects that unsettled, to be sure, and what I struggled with upon completion of the film is what the point of it all was.
I am not familiar with Asia Argento's career, so I can't fathom what drew her to this work, unless she was not aware it was a hoax. Even if she thought it was real, I'm trying to figure out what compelled her to film this story, which is riddled with flaws (hoax or not). Some might argue that the underlying theme is the unbreakable bond between mother and son, but this claim is problematic on many levels. If the fictional memoir was literally adapted, Sarah wins her son's love by preying on his fear and abusing him, not only physically (through the introduction of drugs and the administration of corporal punishment by her boyfriends) but mentally and emotionally. The character uses emotional blackmail to gain her son's fealty, and given that he's only 7 to start, he has no weapons to combat this trauma.
So, perhaps the film is designed to expose the weaknesses in the child welfare system and the foster care system. After all, how would Sarah regain custody of her son from his stable foster home unless she pulled the wool over the heads of social services? She clearly has shown no evolution or reformation toward a lifestyle that would be stable for her son. She repeats over and over again that she "fought for" him, and that he can't leave her, because she has no one else...and yet, we're provided no reasons or background information as to how she arrived at this point, making these assertions. We know she came from an austere, religious background, and that her appetites seemed to surpass the limits imposed by her totalitarian parents. We can assume that she ran away to quell those appetites, but we're given no backstory as to how this mother arrived at this juncture in her life, with her deteriorating mental state, addictions to sex and drugs, or even how she came about Jeremiah to begin with. Though the film is focused on Jeremiah's perspective, and his constant loyalty breaks the viewers' hearts only because he's too young to know any better or know how to extract himself from these circumstances, it would help to understand more of the journey and why Jeremiah is dealt the lot he is to know more about the mother. Even if the explanation fails to satisfy, at least an explanation would be offered, whereas the current tale provides none.
To her credit, Argento and partnering cinematographers infuse the film with a hip, pop-art sensibility, washing frames in gritty hues punctuated by bright colors to accentuate the surreality of Jeremiah's circumstances. Camera perspectives are employed creatively, using off-kilter or overhead shots in unexpected places to emphasize the skew of this poor boy's life. The soundtrack was supplied by Sonic Youth, Billy Corgan, and other progressive-rock contributors, and there are sneaky cameos by people like Winona Ryder. Yet, in some ways, these edgy and creative elements aid the film in glorifying the subject matter, which, hoax or not, provides little to consider other than the fact that the visuals themselves are graphic and disturbing, and that the story, what there is of it, seems to have no purpose other than to be disturbing for disturbing's sake.
Also, the performances are largely awkward and disjointed, provided as they are by strings of B-actors (or non-actors, as it were). The most believable and heartbreaking performance belongs to Jimmy Bennett as the younger version of Jeremiah, portraying the most visceral and gut-wrenching of emotions and states of mind, both sober and drug-induced. It was his convincing and mature portrayal that makes the rest of the film both marginally worthwhile and repugnant all at the same time.
In the end, I did not really enjoy The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things because the film itself is deceptive. It wants to be a piece of in-your-face art, striving to challenge the viewer to find the diamond(s) in the rough of its painful story. Yet, the story as a story is deeply flawed, the heartstring-tugging and painful childhood is based on a fiction that does not deserve to be sensationalized, and the art itself is inconsistent and does nothing to redeem the film or reward the viewer for sitting through it. Also, while it seems to want to paint the picture of the undying bond between mother and son, it fails to do so in any emotionally resonant way, at least for this viewer, who remembered how the bond was formed to begin with. All in all, I think the film deserves a 4.5 on the ratings scale, between fair/nice idea that wasn't pulled off and utterly mediocre. I could be biased because of the material, but since the material forms the basis of the entire piece, and since the rest of the piece is creative but unsatisfying in every way, I think the rating, scathing though it is, is anything but deceptive of how this viewer perceived this film.