Where do you begin when reviewing a film based on one of the biggest literary hoaxes in recent memory? Divorce it from the controversy–do what Oscar Wilde advised and look at the object on its own artistic merits rather than the moral implications that will be read into it. The Heart is Deceitful Above All Else is the story of a young boy named Jeremiah who is whisked away from his foster parents by Sarah, his biological mother, into a world of abuse, warped co-dependence, and travails through the dark underbelly of the American South. Heavy on the abuse, be it physical, emotional, or sexual. Director Asia Argento does a fine job portraying one of the worst mothers ever to be caught on film, by turns she is colorlessly vicious and pathetic–pathetic as in arousing both scorn and pity. The young actors who play Jeremiah wander the film’s nightmare-of-a-childhood with the appropriate shell shocked expression. The quality of the cast is much improved by cameos from Marilyn Manson as one of Sarah’s freakish boyfriends and Winona Ryder as a truly insipid abuse counselor; who would have thought that Lydia Lunch and Peter Fonda would ever be in the same film? Unfortunately, this is not a film without problems. Though Argento steered clear of some of the novel’s more over-the-top moments, the base story feels a bit undeveloped and meandering at times. Also, though her white trash accent is mostly plausible, there are moments when Argento’s natural Italian accent peeks out in her delivery. (Note to directors: a throwaway line about the character going to a boarding school in Italy doesn’t do anything to make this sort of thing more believable.) Nevertheless, the biggest problem with this DVD is that an entire scene has gone missing near the end; Sarah and Jeremiah are living in a meth lab…and then suddenly they’ve taken to the streets, with no explanation. This problem is doubly strange as the scene that would explicate this situation is visible in the film’s trailer, but seems to have been cut from the actual film. In the end, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Else is a brutal bit of art house fare that indulges in the unseemly. There are some fine artistic touches–the animated crows are especially creepy symbols of the film’s violence–but overall this movie is let down by a lack of pacing and a wandering plot line.

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