Sacred Heart

Ferzan Ozpetek is one of the most brilliant film directors alive today. This film may be his masterpiece, as it is even better than 'La Finestra di Fronte' ('Facing Windows'), and that seemed impossible. 'Sacred Heart' is nothing to do with Roman Catholicism, and potential viewers should not be put off by fearing that it might be about a lot of tedious nuns praying to 'the sacred heart of Jesus' with their worn rosaries clacking. ('The sacred heart of Jesus' is one of the most appalling, bloody and vulgar of the Roman images, a beating heart transfixed and surrounded by a crown of thorns, and dripping blood just to make it more graphic and 'suffering'. God save us from such barbarous images, and may no film ever be made about it!) The 'sacred heart' referred to in the title is instead the 'secret heart' inside even the most insensitive of us, which can sometimes be awakened, bringing about a character transformation. In this film, a hard and ruthless young businesswoman named Irene, played to perfection by Barbora Bobulova, changes completely before our eyes, in one of the greatest acts of magical transformation ever performed by an actress on the screen. She is a Slovak, who speaks perfect Italian. How did that happen? But then the director is an Italian director who is a Turk. These days anything goes. Italy seems to be becoming as clever at absorbing talented immigrants as the French have always been. This film also contains a magnificent performance by a young girl named Camille Dugay Comencini. As 'Benny', this girl gives a performance so naked in its total honesty that it puts the seal on the story, and makes us believe everything, indeed believe anything. It is Benny who cracks the granite heart of Irene, revealing the sacred heart within. The only Catholic who comes anywhere near this story is a priest named Padre Carras, played superbly by Massimo Poggio, but he is more social worker than religious figure. When he sinks back into the womb of his Church, wanting to introduce Irene to a bishop because she is becoming such a saint, she rightly drops him, as being too compromised by his institution, and she flees the bishop's grand palace without meeting the bishop, to return to the desperate poverty of the disadvantaged whom she is helping. One of the most shocking scenes ever filmed in the entire history of the cinema is when Irene, moved to such extremes of anguish at the suffering of humanity, removes all of her clothes in public piece by piece and gives each article of clothing away to a passing stranger. Of course, she has become more than a little overwrought by this stage, and has to be forced to take a rest. But we see here the birth of a saint, not an institutionalized one, but a real one, independent of any Church and uncontaminated by any clergy. Irene's journey into her private sainthood has then to be tempered by the realization of the realities of the world's suffering, the need for it, and the impossibility of preventing it, or indeed of even ameliorating it significantly on any but a miniature scale. The subtle psychological forces at work in Irene's background, her discovery of the truth about her mother whom she barely knew, of the truth about her manipulative aunt who brought her up, of how to reconcile her business life with her newly-awakened spiritual life, make this one of the most significant films for many years. Ozpetek is struggling with the biggest issues here, and he manages to avoid affectation or the falsifying of realities. Even Benny, who precipitates the changes in Irene, was an admitted thief, albeit of a Robin Hood variety, and perfection was far from her nature. Ozpetek is interested in studying the possibilities not of idealized sainthood, such as that purveyed by the Catholics in their fantasies, but of sainthood in a real world by real people engaged with their surroundings, and who are the very opposite of the meditative recluses idealized by institutional religion. You could call this film 'Sainthood in Action', so opposite is it to the phoney sainthoods of the churches. What Ozpetek has discovered here in the West in this fable of his is an old Buddhist tradition of the Boddhisattva, a being who could move on beyond all this but chooses to remain, in order to help. Above all, this study makes 'depth psychology' look superficial, for Ozpetek has descended so far into the secret hearts of us all that he is deeper than deep, he is truly and wholly de profundis as he cries out and wishes to show us what miracle he has found in the depths.

The movie is about the emotional discovery of a phantasmatic SECOND HEART, hidden into the most secret recesses of our souls, strictly disregarded by the anatomy books. A SECRET HEART whose feeble beat cannot be heard in our chest but can be perceived thank to our passionate involvement, when we are about to perform the greatest acts of love in an emotional detachment from our disturbing human condition, making necessary and irreversible choices in such a way as to discard all prejudices and return good for evil. A SACRED HEART dozing inside everybody's body for a long time, being reawakened just at the right moment, in our case, thank to the great purity of soul of Benny, a pleasant pilferer, played by the young actress Camille Dugay Comencini, who discloses the doors of the soul's insides to an apparently heartless business woman. An INVISIBLE HEART, eager to inspire total confidence in ourselves, to suggest actions and attitudes at odds with the current state of business, to protect human beings against a risky dive into the dark way of easy profit at the cost of their peace of mind. Bound to remind us to turn our eyes and look at the suffering fellowmen with their hands vainly stretched out for aid, resigned to live at the edge of the road in a everlasting humiliating condition of life. By conventional standards it's really easy to close our eyes in the presence of the uncomfortable reality of people in distress and turn our backs to their disturbing presence capable to upset the stability of a world created by us to be like ourselves, always ready to breathe frantic winds of globalization that go on producing new waves of poor people all over the world.

The whole work is permeated by a sense of palpable need of sacrality, very uncomfortable on account of many destabilizing sequences where Ferzan Ozpeteck invites us to look away from the riches of the world and cast a glance beyond our limited horizons, towards new risky dimensions, to those outcasts of fortune claiming in a faint voice the right to live a decent life. The director goes over and over this subject again, defined by himself as a sort of "soul thriller". The human soul is showed in all its nuances by the character of Irene, the beautiful Barbara Bobulova (as a substitute for Valeria Golino, the best Italian actress together with Giovanna Mezzogiorno).

IRENE LOOKS LIKE AN ARABIAN PHOENIX risen from the ashes of her condition of lacking feeling woman, symbol of capitalistic exploitation, young restless soul in a vertical dive towards cathartic experiences, unceasingly followed by the camera in many stunning sequences. WOOED by the mechanic eye like a delicious lover truly deserving all possible attentions lavished on her. FONDLED and PETTED incessantly, thank to extended and inquisitive close-ups, in her pauses for reflection, in her moments of silence, in her excitements and internal tensions, with her stare of astonishment suspended in the void of an hypothetical space and her nude and defenseless face vowed to silence. Faithfully FOLLOWED in her wanderings with soft long takes in a sinuous circular movement of the camera, as a sacrificial victim at the mercy of the onlookers' eyes. CELEBRATED by an amazing soundtrack in a successful attempt at carrying into effect her way of redemption. IMMORTALIZED as a living symbol of Michelangelo's Pieta, extreme evidence of the folly of self-giving love, of the solidarity heralding her thirst for justice to the whole world, rebelling against every prevailing logic imbued with the worship of wealth. SUPPORTED by documentary evidence in her fits of giddiness thank to hyper-kinetics movements of camera in a cold, alienating swimming pool. Impiteously VIOLATED in her privacy and handed over to the media's morbid curiosity in her cathartic moments of physical and moral denouement, extreme final act of gift of herself and her belongings, with the chaste nakedness of her spotless bosom revealed and offered for all the hurried passers-by to see, as a token of her salvific spirit of sacrifice and of her sense of self-denial towards a world pervaded with deep sorrow and suffering.

Scenes from a cathartic journey of darkness, regret and redemption orchestrated by another side of Ozpetek: the director sets aside his particular concept of "family" to devote himself to a moving project, to something that strikes us with a deep-rooted feeling and infuses courage into our hearts inspiring hope in our spirits. To something new that makes up our minds to cast a new glance at the life through Irene's sea blue eyes, towards more winding directions, inviting us to cast reflections on ourselves.

I came to know Ozpetek's work in his monumental, "Le Fate Ignoranti". His new film is quite different, but doesn't disappoint. Essentially, it is a "love story", of a woman coming to her truest self, her "sacred heart... cuore sacro", in a confrontation with her past, and the memory of her mother; the present, and the death of a young girl whom she befriended; and the future, and the direction her life will take. Ozpetek has produced a startlingly beautiful film about the birth of a "saint", and how one can be led out of a self-enclosed egocentric existence into a life of radical communion with others. It reminds me of another film with the same theme, "Central Station Brazil". BEAUTIFUL... not to be missed!

I saw this film at the 2006 Palm Springs International Film Festival and of the 35 films I saw there this made my top 10. I liked the look and feel and style of this movie. There were elements that seemed a little far-fetched or implausible but the movie overall is very good. The unlikely relationship between Irene and Benny which would seem to fall in that implausible category actually becomes some great on-screen chemistry. I liked the use of double in this film. Two aunts, two men she meets a priest and a beggar, Irene's internal conflict and her two worlds, her two houses, her two hearts. This is a very good film and to keep with the double symbolism theme I really should see it twice. I recommend it and give it a 8.0 on a scale of 10.

For the most part, modern Italian cinema falls in a metaphorical crease somewhere between shite and ridiculouslyunwatchablegaginducing shite. Fortunately, the laws that regulate ordinary life miraculously do manage to permeate that thick veil that separates the silver screen from reality, and just like ordinary life is graced by the presence of exceptions, so is Italian cinema. The exceptions to the aforementioned sweeping observation are rare and, quite frankly, may not all be entirely deserving. However, if I may be so bold as to point out the obvious, it is precisely this elusiveness that casts an aura of light around these pictures, kindling a sort of applausive reaction that would otherwise be unwarranted.

The Consequences of Love is a prime example of my Nobel prize theory. It is, by all accounts, a remarkable achievement in elegance and sophistication. Yet, and here I may be momentarily possessed by Saint Cynicus, I feel inclined to partly attribute this positive reception to the widespread absence of quality in Italian cinema. Sorrentino's film was, therefore, a blissful simmer of light in a dark, slimy, murky ocean and, because of this, it was received like a Messiah.

Wide consensus indicates that Ozpetek's films also constitute a source of illumination in this lifeless world and, although I may not wait in a state of advanced excitement and trepidation for the release of his next picture, it is fair to say that, for once, I sheepishly agree with the crowd. Which brings me to the movie in question, Cuore Sacro. Part of me feels compelled to criticise the absurdity of this modern day Franciscan tale. Once again possessed by the spirit of Saint Cynicus, I can't help but remain baffled by the banality of an idea so religious as to verge on the profane. You may say that it is precisely this sort of seemingly soul inspiring parable that can lift us from the crude stiffness of our faithless times. I concede that, despite the awful predictability, there could be pinch of verity in this, but I still think that, however uplifting it may be, it still has the same consistency of a ripe Vacherin.

Schizophrenic nut that I am, the other side of me applauds Ozpetek for his directorial skills. He takes potentially lethal material that, at least at first glance, would appear appropriate for a TV film for the Church Channel, and, perhaps aided by the hand of the Almighty himself, miraculously manages to add a layer of basic, though effective, sophistication. The minimalist direction, the (perhaps forced) elegance of the dialogues and the acting dexterity of Barbora Babulova, all contribute to the overshadowing of the banality of the story and to the accomplishment of a final product that, after all, is not that trite, not that religious and thus, not that cinematically profane.