As you've undoubtedly heard by now, cult writer J.T. Leroy
does not exist. His autobiographical books surrounding his
abusive childhood were actually the creation of a
Brooklyn-raised, San Fransisco-dwelling woman named Laura
Albert.
Leroy's fatuity not withstanding, there's no denying
his works -- fiction or otherwise -- are intoxicating and
unnerving. Sarah, Leroy's first novel about his drug-addicted,
drunken mother, paved the way to perhaps the writer's most
ambitious work, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. The
collection of short stories is supposedly based around the
writer's miserable childhood with his mother, Sarah, a kooky,
wannabe punk, truck-stop prostitute.
What renders the film
version intriguing is the experimental, Gus Van Sant-ish
direction by Asia Argento, who also demonstrates her thespian
talents in the role of Sarah.
The film opens with 7-year-old Jeremiah (Jimmy Bennett)
literally being ripped from his foster parent's home and
shuttled back into the custody of his biological mother. Sarah
(Argento), a 23-year-old mentally unstable woman, embarks on a
road trip with Jeremiah, their trip frequently interrupted by
stops to punk rock concerts and Sarah's steady stream of
boyfriends.
In his itinerancy, Jeremiah is exposed to drugs,
raped, forced to eat out of dumpsters, and eventually
abandoned by his mother for three years. During his
abandonment he is taken in by Sarah's fundamentalist parents.
A
Argento, the spitfire daughter of Italian filmmaker Dario
Argento, has crafted an isolating, compelling, and very
watchable film. The screenplay, by Argento, meanders a little
from its core principle of the love/hate relationship between
Jeremiah (played wonderfully by Bennett and Cole and later
Dylan Sproue) and Sarah. However, Argento manages to heighten
the drudgery with the use of popular faces among the cast,
including Peter Fonda, Winona Ryder, as an impatient child
psychologist, Jeremy Sisto, as one of Sarah's many boyfriends,
Marilyn Manson, as a beer-guzzling pervert, and Michael Pitt,
who gives the funniest peformance in the film as Buddy, a
ditzy motorcycle-riding fool who could be the love child of
Rose Nyland and Gomer Pyle.
The film benefits from Argento's obvious love for the material
and her kinetic performance as Sarah. She proves she is an
efficient actress and one of the few willing to go the
distance with a reprehensible character.
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THE HEART IS DECEITFUL