Haunted Heart
Haunted Heart
Haunted Heart: Oscar-winning Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba (Belle Epoque, The Dream Of The Mad Monkey, Chico And Rita) pays tribute to the noir genre in Haunted Heart movie that features Matt Dillon as a man in a passionate affair with a younger Spanish woman on a beautiful Greek island and has a dark past. Shot at the end of 2022, Heart is aesthetically pleasing, however, is strictly conventional with no surprises.
After the screening of the film, Aida Folch who co-stars with Trueba after 2012’s The Artist And The Model, is expected to help attract local audience from the August 23 general release date in Spain, following the movies opening in July at the Atlantida Mallorca Film Festival. It’s a fascinating shift from Dillon also, after his role as Marlon Brando in Jessica Palud’s film Being Maria, and his 2020 debut as director in the Cuban jazz documentary El Gran Fellove. In any case, the director of Calle 54 is able to incorporate jazz in one form or the other in the character of Dillon.
He’s ambitious Max Smith, a character of the restaurant when Alex (Folch) turns up a week late to begin summer work for the restaurant after she is late by a week comes off as showy and good looking. We revert back to the traditional prank comedy as Alex attempts to acquire the relevant lingo and reaches behind a swinging door causing it to knock her over. Nothing is known about Max really, but Alex seems to have the hots for him while he remains, utterly unhelpful, which is always irritating. “That is a story for another day,” is the line Alex hears repeatedly whenever she asks him more in different contexts. Their complex game of conceal and reveal where both the participants allow glimpses of themselves which builds suspense is portrayed quite cleverly. Sooner rather than later, Max and Alex’s relationship has developed to be volatile and intimate, however, worrying still are the opinions of Chico, a skirt chasing good natured (Juan Pablo Urrego from Colombia) who works at the restaurant and who has the hots for Alex and will soon become her reliable pet.
But how interesting it is to imagine a man as a keeper of an old clarinet, claiming he can’t play, but actually goes out somewhere and plays on his favorite beach. The dimwitted Max is certainly a very sexy and believable figure for Alex’s interest, especially since Dillon uses his total screen presence for better and decides to add his cooking skills and beach bum attitude to cover his sinister side.
Many questions embedded in the story, for instance, why does the main character Max get to be surrounded by so many mysteries, become obsessive about Alex as the more she learns about him, the more she puts herself at risk of being corrupted by Max’s “evil” traits although how this evil would manifest is something the viewer has to get tired waiting for as they are only revealed in the last act. Folch presents Alex as an equally tough but internally soft skinned person who was influenced by an undefined past and consequently desires an older man. But these sparks in the dangerous relations do not develop into passion which could really change the whole scenario.
Local colour is clearly not overlooked as every frame in the photography of Sergio Ivan Castano stirs the viewer to book the next flight into this Greek island overgrown with trees, with a shimmering sparkling sea and a sandy beach, and with mysterious dark interiors which make you wish to see these places. These have mounds of clutter which are meticulously arranged within. One shot shows a Patricia Highsmith novel, the importance of the writer to the portrayal of Haunted Heart lies in an interplay of beauty and danger inherent in the old Europe.
At the later stages, when we start to know more about Max, the script bores us as it tries to sustain its disengaged velocity. It begins to feel as if the audience is rushed from scene to scene to ‘set the stage’, with the expectation of fulfillment, despite a couple of wonderfully-staged set pieces – scenes of boiling water around Alex as she places a record for Max in the restaurant, making him feel nostalgic – almost like a video game in which we press the skip button too often for lack of anticipation for any unfolding. Quite frankly speaking, while Haunted House may give pause to those who admire the good old Hitchcock or Ripley with some sense of haunting dread, it still fails to develop its own story or vision throughout.
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- Genre: Romance, Thriller
- Country: Spain, United States, Colombia
- Director: Fernando Trueba
- Cast: Matt Dillon, Aida Folch, Juan Pablo Urrego
