The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things
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| The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things | |
|---|---|
 The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things film poster |
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| Directed by | Asia Argento |
| Produced by | Chris Hanley, Ryan R. Johnson, etc |
| Written by | Stories: JT LeRoy Screenplay: Asia Argento Alessandro Magania |
| Starring | Asia Argento, Jimmy Bennett, Dylan Sprouse, Cole Sprouse |
| Distributed by | Palm Pictures |
| Release date(s) | May 15, 2004 |
| Running time | 97 minutes |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things is a 2004 film directed by and starring Asia Argento. It is based on JT LeRoy's novel of the same name, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things. The film received a limited release in North American theatres on March 10, 2006.
The title is taken from the King James Version of the Bible, Book of Jeremiah, chapter 17, verse 9.
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[edit] Plot
The film revolves around a tattered relationship between a drug addicted mother and her son. Five-year-old Jeremiah (Jimmy Bennett) meets his mother for the first time since his birth and is taken away screaming from his comfortable foster home. His biological mother, Sarah (Asia Argento), tries to mother him. When her son doesn't respond the way she wants, she gets angry and lies to him by pretending his foster parents call and tell her they don't want him. After wetting the bed and cleaning himself up, Jeremiah attempts to run away while his mother is sleeping. He reaches the police station, only to have his mother come and pick him up.
At first, Jeremiah doesn't believe that Sarah is really his mother, but she explains that "those damn social workers" thought it was better if he was fostered. She says that she fought very hard to get him back, and he better start showing respect to her. Over the next few months, Jeremiah witnesses drug-taking, heavy drinking, smoking, prostitution, striptease and sex, and he begins to accept these things as normal. Jeremiah also receives a beating from one of Sarah's one-night stands, because he urinated on the pillows on which he was sleeping in the bath tub.
Sarah then marries one of her clients and they leave Jeremiah alone for "two days" while they honeymoon in Atlantic City. When he begins to think they aren't coming back, Jeremiah draws all over the walls and destroys things in the apartment. Soon the couple's money runs out and Sarah deserts her new husband. He returns to the house and, though he doesn't appear angry with Jeremiah at first, later rapes him, calling Jeremiah "Sarah". Riddled with guilt and not wanting to take care of Jeremiah, the husband leaves him alone in the car on the side of a road. Jeremiah is found and taken to hospital.
Eventually his grandmother picks him up and takes him to West Virginia. Jeremiah now experiences a period of torment with a cult who claim to act according to the Bible. Sarah's younger brother, Aaron, listens to Jeremiah singing Anarchy in the UK by the Sex Pistols and tries to convince him to sing it to Jeremiah's grandfather, the leader of the cult, to get him into trouble. After three years of growing up with the cult, however, we see an 11-year-old Jeremiah (played by identical twins Dylan Sprouse and Cole Sprouse) preaching on the street. He suddenly hears the voice of his mother, who has returned to reclaim him. She said that her parents sent her to the same place, but it's not for them. They drive off in the 18-wheeler of her new boyfriend.
Sarah and her new boyfriend fight continually. After Sarah leaves his cab, the trucker gets fed up and sends Jeremiah to get something to eat. When he returns, he finds Sarah alone in the back of the cab. She encourages him to lay with her.
Sarah and Jeremiah find themselves abandoned at the truck stop, so she turns tricks to make money while Jeremiah sits outside. Because he wants his mother's acceptance, Jeremiah allows his mother to persuade him into cross dressing so he can be her "little sister" at truck stops and later at a strip club where Sarah has started dancing. While there, Jeremiah discovers what his mother does for money. The police arrest almost everyone in the strip club, except Jeremiah, who hides under a table. Sarah returns to their run-down motel and goes into withdrawal because she can't find any drugs.
With Sarah now being the only influential figure in his life, Jeremiah starts to adopt his mother's seduction techniques. After dressing up as a 'baby doll' version of Sarah, Jeremiah/Sarah seduces Jackson (Marilyn Manson), his mother's latest man, who initially tries to rebuff the boy's advances, but then rapes him. Furious with Jackson for giving in to the boy's advances and with Jeremiah for ruining her panties, she takes Jeremiah and leaves.
Later, they are seen in a house where the basement houses a meth lab. When his mother and her latest boyfriend, Chester (Jeremy Sisto), leave, Jeremiah goes down into the basement out of curiosity. He plays in a mound of coal, imagining lumps of it to have mother and child faces which he then smashes and screams at. His slow-witted friend Buddy (Michael Pitt) follows him down; Jeremiah makes him promise not to tell that he had been down there, or else they won't get to eat Jiffy Pop and watch cartoons together anymore. He then convinces Buddy to clean up the mess he made of the coal heap. However, as Jeremiah is upstairs watching cartoons, Chester returns and becomes enraged with Buddy for being in the meth lab and protecting Jeremiah. While Chester and Buddy are in the basement, the lab explodes. Buddy runs out screaming on fire and collapses, with a charred Chester not far behind. Sarah and Jeremiah drive away. In an effort to elude police, they then dye their hair black.
After a failed attempt to shop at a grocery store because of Sarah's paranoia, Sarah and Jeremiah run into an alley where she cries. Jeremiah holds her and promises that he will protect her. Later, Jeremiah finds food to eat from the dumpster at a fast food restaurant. His mother, in her state, convinces him that the food he ate was poisoned. Jeremiah tearfully pleads for an antidote, and Sarah gives a bottle to him. Jeremiah drinks it and vomits. Sarah pushes him from the car and leaves him.
The next morning, Jeremiah drinks the antidote again, but eventually realizes it's that that's poison. He stumbles into a restaurant and to the ordering desk, yelling to a woman he thinks is Sarah that he has been poisoned, then collapses. Jeremiah wakes up in the hospital with his grandmother beside him. She says that it took only six months to ruin what they had built in three years. She tells him that Sarah is in the psychiatric ward because she was found running naked and hysterical through an intersection.
Later that night, Sarah goes into Jeremiah's hospital room and takes out his IV drip while his grandmother is asleep. Rather than have him go back to the cult, she clutches her son's hand and they both walk away in hospital gowns. The final scene is of Sarah and Jeremiah driving away.
[edit] Trivia
- Dylan and Cole's mother appeared in the film as the black hair stripper.
- Dylan and Cole were suppose to play Jeremiah, age 7 as well. But Asia wanted someone younger.
[edit] Direction
Although Asia Argento (who both directed and performed in the film) is Italian, she did the whole film in a Southern accent. The film is heavily influenced by the work of director Harmony Korine. One could say that Korine's Gummo created a sort of new white trash exploitation film genre with which Heart is Deceitful shares many themes. The ice skater on the television set is a direct reference to Korine's film Julien Donkey-Boy.
Much of the film was shot on location in Knoxville, Tennessee.
The animated sequences were done by Christiane Cegavske.
[edit] DVD controversy
It has been confirmed by director Asia Argento and distribution company, Palm Pictures, that the Region 1 edition of the DVD lacks an approximate five minutes of footage [1] (predominantly the meth lab explosion) due to an authoring error during mass production. Those that have purchased the Region 1 DVD may contact Palm Pictures directly and a replacement disc, with all scenes intact, will be offered in exchange.
[edit] Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Asia Argento | Sarah |
| Jimmy Bennett | Young Jeremiah |
| Dylan Sprouse | Older Jeremiah |
| Cole Sprouse | Older Jeremiah |
| Peter Fonda | Grandfather |
| Ben Foster | Fleshy Boy |
| Marilyn Manson | Jackson |
| Ornella Muti | Grandmother |
| Kip Pardue | Luther |
| Michael Pitt | Buddy |
| Jeremy Renner | Emerson |
| John Robinson | Aaron |
| Jeremy Sisto | Chester |
| Winona Ryder | Psychologist |
