Heartless
A frustrating unravelling can't take away the fact that Heartless is visually and atmospherically unforgettable.
Artist and writer Philip Ridley follows up his sporadic features (The Passion of Darkly Noon and The Reflecting Skin) with this deeply unsettling modern fairytale. A gothic horror in the bowels of London, Ridley's canny eye finds beauty in the grotesque, and while failing as a original thriller, is nevertheless a striking spriritual allegory.
The East End is ruled by packs of hoodies, who we see as literally demonic beings, resembling velociraptors, horrifically screeching as they burn and pillage. Jim Sturgess is Jamie, a photographer born with a heart-shaped birthmark covering one side of his face. A sensitive and troubled soul, he doesn't fit well in the violent estate in which he is forced to live. Ridley plunges us into this world to show Jamie's mother was a victim of these gangs, but a muddled (deliberately?) narrative doesn't show this is as a breaking point.
The crux of the matter is that the (still devastatingly handsome) Jamie feels so disfigured, his longing for one of the models drives him to make a Faustian pact with the grimy flat-dwelling Papa B (Joseph Mawle, more eye-rolling than fearsome in full-on rock god gear).
Clémence Poésy is the angelic object of Jamie's desire, bringing glowing light and softness as all good love interests are there to do in the eyes of the leading man. More unconventional is Eddie Marsan's cameo as the man who chillingly reminds Jamie there are two sides to a pact. Marsan's "weapons man" is infinitely more disturbing than Papa B, who is aided by a little girl (an irritating idea that doesn't work on any level). Noel Clarke turns up as Jamie's friend and confidante as the insanity of this evil London unfolds, somberly crumbling under its power. Sturgess is fantastically cast in a role that requires a believable amount of sensitivity, his nervous demeanour sitting comfortably with his natural charm and sweetness.
It is he that makes the diarrhoea of Ridley's mind watchable, and remotely likeable, for it as chaotic as the nightmarish London it depicts. Bumping around genres like a pinball, it lacks the dedicated focus all good horrors have, indicating loftier aims. However, a frustrating unravelling can't take away the fact that Heartless is visually and atmospherically unforgettable.
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