- Based on the novel by the mysterious and controversial JT LeRoy, Asia Argento's THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS is a penetrating look at the emotional and physical bonds between mother and son. Argento, the daughter of Italian horror king Dario Argento (SUSPIRIA), directed and stars in the film, playing Sarah, a young woman addicted to sex, drugs, and danger. The movie opens as she ree
Featuring a series of loosely connected autobiographical stories, they describe the disturbing relationship between a mother and her adolescent son as she moves from lover to lover, dressing him as a girl and forcing him to shoplift. These are shocking stories of abusive love and dysfunctional sexuality, of heartbreak and of innocence lost. Once again, LeRoy's fantastical imagination and lyricism twists his haunted past into something utterly strange and magical.These are the stories of a young boy on t! he run, away from his past, hellbent towards an unknown future. Connected, they form a sometimes harrowing, sometimes bleakly funny, and often touchingly tender portrait of a complicated life. Like a modern-day Voltaire, LeRoy bounces his characters from adventure to adventure, each of them unyielding in the belief that the best of all possible worlds lies just around the next corner. Fresh, raw, and absolutely unforgettable, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things has further established the acclaimed author of Sarah as one of the most compelling voices in contemporary fiction. JT LeRoy was born in 1980. He is the author of the novel Sarah. First published at the age of sixteen, he has also written article and stories for Spin, Nerve, NY Press, The Stranger, and several anthologies, under the pseudonym Terminator. He lives in San Francisco. 'LeRoy's work is a startling achievement in his accelerating mastery of the literary form.' â€" Publishers Weekly (starred review) 'Po! werful…LeRoy manages to write simply about the more tangled ! of emoti ons â€" and to describe, without hatred or self-pity, the most monstrous of deeds.' â€" Newsweek 'Brilliant, gifted, and profound...[JT LeRoy] is the witness to all the tales that go on in the dark, and for all of us, long may he have the courage to remember' â€" Vanity Fair 'LeRoy's impressive grit is mesmerizing.' â€" San Francisco Chronicle 'Strong, fierce, hard, and frankly astonishing.' â€" Kirkus 'Relentlessly brutal and flawlessly scribed... LeRoy's prose soars.' â€" San Francisco Bay GuardianThese are the stories of a young boy on the run, away from his past, hellbent towards an unknown future. Connected, they form a sometimes harrowing, sometimes bleakly funny, and often touchingly tender portrait of a complicated life. Like a modern-day Voltaire, LeRoy bounces his characters from adventure to adventure, each of them unyielding in the belief that the best of all possible worlds lies just around the next corner. Fresh, raw, and absolutely unforgettable, The Heart is ! Deceitful Above All Things has further established the acclaimed author of Sarah as one of the most compelling voices in contemporary fiction. JT LeRoy was born in 1980. He is the author of the novel Sarah. First published at the age of sixteen, he has also written article and stories for Spin, Nerve, NY Press, The Stranger, and several anthologies, under the pseudonym Terminator. He lives in San Francisco. 'LeRoy's work is a startling achievement in his accelerating mastery of the literary form.' â€" Publishers Weekly (starred review) 'Powerful…LeRoy manages to write simply about the more tangled of emotions â€" and to describe, without hatred or self-pity, the most monstrous of deeds.' â€" Newsweek 'Brilliant, gifted, and profound...[JT LeRoy] is the witness to all the tales that go on in the dark, and for all of us, long may he have the courage to remember' â€" Vanity Fair 'LeRoy's impressive grit is mesmerizing.' â€" San Francisco Chronicle 'Strong, fierce, hard, and ! frankly astonishing.' â€" Kirkus 'Relentlessly brutal and flaw! lessly s cribed... LeRoy's prose soars.' â€" San Francisco Bay GuardianSeven-year-old Jeremiah lived a calm, comfortable life in the care of a loving foster home until the day his young mother Sarah (Argento) came to take him against his will into her reckless life of turmoil and depravity, between desolate truck-stops, flea bag motels, strip joints, drug den and deadbeat surrogate dads until he finds himself in the custody of his ultra-religious grandparents. Having adapted to his new life as a Christian fundamentalist, Sarah returns to claim her son. Bound by a love only a mother and son could have for each other, Sarah pulls Jeremiah further and further into her dementia. When Sarah is finally and wholly consumed by drugs, prostitution and violence, Jeremiah is forced into a desperate struggle to survive the madness of his surroundings.Asia Argento's adaptation of JT Leroy's short story collection,
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, still has the heartbreaking urgen! cy of a tale about child abuse, regardless of Leroy's proven fraudulent identity. Weaving plots together from Leroy's two books,
Sarah, and
The Heart Is Deceitful, Argento relays the history of orphaned Jeremiah (Jimmy Bennett/Cole Sprouse), whose mother Sarah (Asia Argento) abandons him as a baby to work as a truck-stop lot lizard for her methamphetamine habit. Sarah tears Jeremiah away from a stable foster home to pathetically attempt mothering her seven-year old son. Jeremiah instantly grows up in strip clubs, drug dealers' homes, big rigs, and in the hot rod that he and his mother call home. His sadomasochistic sexual psychology also develops prematurely, informed by men who rape and beat him, and a mother whose work as a hooker requires Jeremiah's dressing up as a girl to pass as her younger sister. Enter a born again, psychotically zealous Grandfather (Peter Fonda) who takes temporary custody of Jeremiah, and the viewer begins to understand Sarah's sever! e rebelliousness, sensing that the punk, 23-year old prostitut! e may be a better parent for Jeremiah, simply because she loves him. Shot by Eric Alan Edwards
(Kids, My Own Private Idaho), and with a soundtrack including Sonic Youth, Subhumans, Billy Corgan, and Hasil Adkins, the film has a raunchy, Southern appeal similar to that of Leroy's books. Cameos appearances by Winona Ryder and Marilyn Manson add rock star power. Argento keeps it sexy, as this is as much a story of the mother-child bond as it is about the malformation of a boy's sexual identity. True or not,
The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things is a sincere yet stylized rendition of a terribly sad story.
--Trinie Dalton
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