This marks the last of the recommendations that I asked for on South American films from Broken Forum. I can’t say that I’ve liked everything on the list I was given but they sure have been interesting and many I would never have watched on my own. This particular film is a great example of this and it’s by a director whose work we’ve seen before, Argentinean Eliseo Subiela who also made Man Facing Southeast.
Oliverio is a dashing but impoverished poet. He is talented enough that advertising companies value his work but he feels that such work is selling out and disdains it unless absolutely necessary. He prefers instead to approach cars stuck in traffic jams and offer the drivers verses in exchange for cash. He and his friends, especially Gustavo who is a sculptor specializing in giant reproductions of male and female sexual organs, even use poetry to pay for meals at restaurants. He doesn’t let his lack of money bother him however as he is preoccupied with finding the perfect woman to share his life with. As he states to every woman he meets, he is prepared to accept all manner of defects in a woman but he is absolutely intransigent on one single requirement: that she must be able to fly. It seems like an impossible demand but it’s right in line with this magical world that Subiela has created.
As I mentioned to my wife who likes to summarize the plots of the films that we watch on her own blog, trying to reduce The Dark Side of the Heart to a series of plot points seems like a pretty tall order. It’s just one of those films that has to be seen to be appreciated. It’s part philosophical musing, part dream vision and part erotica, with an accompanying side order of poetry in abundance. As an exercise of pure creativity, this film is a lot of fun and is surprisingly approachable. The dream imagery is straightforward and easy to understand. When Oliverio places both a hundred U.S. dollar bill together with his own beating heart ripped out of his chest on a silver platter and offers it to a prostitute, you don’t have to be a dedicated film buff to know what he means. Even when it is at its silliest, such as when Oliverio talks to his mother in the form of a cow, it is entertaining. It’s no surprise that I liked this a lot more than Man Facing Southeast.
Subiela shows equally creativity in the cinematography, with some shots of the performances in the nightclubs that Oliverio visits being quite striking. Sandra Ballesteros is incredibly hot as the prostitute he falls in love with while Darío Grandinetti as Oliverio somehow manages to deliver all those lines of poetry without looking silly. I’m skeptical that the poetry contains much real insight but I have to admit that they do conjure up some arresting imagery. Just like the film, maybe that’s enough.