Heartless

Until a few weeks ago I’d never heard of Philip Ridley’s Heartless. In fact, I hadn’t thought of Ridley in years — not since his very strange and very disturbing The Reflecting Skin (1990) was playing a lot on Cinemax and the Sundance Channel in the mid-1990s. This was one of those — often perplexing — “suggestions” by the IMDb. You know the sort — “Recommended because of your interest in” fill in the title. Seeing that it starred Jim Sturgess (who I’ve thought ought to have had a better career after Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe in 2007), I looked it up. When I saw Philip Ridley’s name, I was sure it was at least worth a look, so I ordered it. It was — and is — worth a look. In fact, it’s worth more than one look. Two viewings in and I found what was at first only interesting and well-made on a single look to be a richly rewarding film of surprising depth. It’s also every bit as disturbing as The Reflecting Skin, but in a different way. Yes, it qualifies as a horror film — in fact, it’s occasionally quite graphic — but it’s more than that. It’s a very odd modern fairy tale set in the less than lovely sections of South London.

In a sense, it’s just a variation on the Faust tale — with young Jamie Morgan (Sturgess) making a deal with the devil — or “Papa B” (for Beelzebub?). In exchange for Jamie causing some unspecified chaos, Papa B (Joseph Mawle) will remove Jamie’s disfiguring birthmark, allowing him to have — he thinks — a normal life. The procedure intself is pretty grim and gruesome, but the nature of the “chaos” is even worse — Jamie has to murder someone by removing the victim’s still-beating heart and place it on a church’s (any denomination) before the last stroke of midnight. The murder of a street hustler (Jack Gordon) is played with an astonishing blend of suspence, graphic horror, and black comedy. Of course, one is always on shaky ground when dealing with the devil and there’s more to come.

Now, I’ve presented all this is the simplest of terms — and at face value — but the truth of Heartless is that there are no simple terms and face value is rarely what it seems. That’s really the whole point of the movie — and the further you go into it, the more unsettling it becomes. There are those who will feel that the film cheats, but if you look carefully, this isn’t so. Everything you need to know is handed to you — you just don’t recognize it, because you’re seeing things as Jamie sees them, trapped in a hellish neighborhood and a hellish life. His image of himself and the world he inhabits is unrelentingly ugly, generating a startlingly unwholesome atmosphere. (Papa B’s council flat is one of the most ghastly domiciles ever committed to film. It seems to seep into your very bones.) The film rather clumsily tips its hand as to one of the surprises, but watching it a second time, I’m not sure this could have been handled any better — and it has to be there.

I don’t want to say too much about the specifics of the events. That would hurt the film’s original impact. But it’s as well to realize that Heartless takes place in a world of its own — a mystical, sometimes confusing place. The question ultimately becomes where this world actually is. Let’s just say, this isn’t your basic horror movie.

The Thursday Horror Picture Show will screen Heartless Thursday, Nov. 6, at 8 p.m. in Theater Six  at The Carolina Asheville and will be hosted by Xpress movie critics Ken Hanke and Justin Souther.