Sacred Heart (2005) User Reviews

Quite good after all

[the_rock456 · 6/10 · 1 October 2005]

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.

Disappointed

[Mizz_dynamitee · 6/10 · 12 March 2006]

I am a huge fan of Ozpetek and have purchased all of his movies; however the norm is that every actor has a down day and then directs something that just doesn't feel right to others..

I was let down; I a not saying that the film is really bad it is just dry.. too dry for such a star! He has experimented with something new and you can feel that without a doubt... I believe that Ozpetek needs to stick to what he feels is right and ensure that he gives himself enough time to think about it next time round..

The protagonist was completely bonkers and unrealistic which didn't fit into the type of filmography that Ozpetek usually delivers.. Experimenting is brave and needed in such a south spiralling world however please do not rush into your second takes, keep it shocking and Andrea Guerra ought to be recognised as well.. Keep Andrea Guerra in every film that man is a genius..! Hans Zimmer quality

pompous and naive...

[jakuzzi420 · 2/10 · 3 March 2005]

I live in Rome where the Turkish director of this film lives and works. From my Italian friends I have heard many good things about his films...so after seeing the preview I really wanted to see "Cuore Sacro". I am deeply disappointed, one of the most pompous, pseudo-religious, highly improbable and naive films. I love film but this one is really heavy and bad. The main character is really crazy, and should be locked up in a madhouse...made me sympathise with the negative character of an aunt, who runs a dirty-dealing company that only wants to make money...and I consider myself an anti-capitalist...that bad!!!

Interesting

[johno-21 · 8/10 · 1 February 2006]

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.

A mediocre mess

[amadisofgaul · 4/10 · 9 August 2006]

Cuore Sacro combines glossy film effects with a story that leaves much to be desired. With a script that the screen-writers for "Touched by an Angel" might have passed up as being too impuissant, Ozpetek still keeps us interested at times. In fact, I wanted to focus on the positives but I found the last act so bafflingly bizarre and awful that I think the couple who jumped to their deaths in the very beginning might have been the fortunate ones.

This movie is at heart (pun intended) a story built on a big twist-style ending. This kind of tenuous foundation can result in a tremendous success like Tornatore's Una Pura Formalità or god-awful garbage like the films of M. Night Shyamalan. Cuore Sacro falls somewhat closer to the latter. I found the cinematography in general to be above average. The tracking shots of Irene dutifully doing her quotidian laps in the pool were very impressive as was the atmosphere conjured by the interior of her mother's house. For me, the grotesque parody of Michelangelo's Pieta when Giancarlo comes in from the rain and Irene poses with him was a bit of a stretch. One big issue that I took exception to in this film was Ozpetek's method of simply turning the camera directly into the face of his protagonist and recording the emotions taking place. This worked to fantastic effect in Facing Windows, but when employed here it seems that Bubolova is no Mezzogiorno. In fact besides the ridiculous story, the main problem with this film is the milquetoast performance of it's main character. It made the final breakdown scene even more unconscionably bad.

In this movie Ozpetek continues his crusade against our corporate-driven societies by urging us to be more spiritual (not necessarily religious) and more altruistic. And while I'm certainly one who is very sympathetic to this view, I felt as if the audience was being hit over the head with a blunt object. Could the characters have been anymore two-dimensional? I tended to find this movie very enervating and soulless. Was the "evil" aunt Eleonora anything more than a caricature? It goes for the people on the side of "right" too, like the "good" aunt Maria Clara and the elderly doorman Aurelio. And just in case we might have missed Ozpetek's point, he decided to clothe his opposing forces in their own liveries.

This brings me to an interesting point about the director's use of color. He clothes the opening couple who briefly take flight in all black, as well as Irene (when we first meet her and after her life-conversion), the evil aunt Eleonora, and of course the good but confused Padre Carras. Black is a color that suggests a definite course, the wearer's mind is set and emotionless. It is the color of choice for that indispensable item of modern day armor, the business suit. It is also the color of mourning, such as the funerary finery sported by the suicidal duo. Finally, black is the color of piety, such as the simple robes of priests and nuns that Irene emulates in the second half of the film.

The other main color, and a very appropriate choice for a movie about the sacred heart, is red. It is a color that has an extreme inherent emotional component. The character who wears red is bold, emotional, receptive to new ideas, and indulgent. Red is a risky color in modern times; it challenges our perceptions of the wearer and at the same time makes the wearer vulnerable. Yet red carries an enormous weight of history and mysticism, as the earliest members of Cro-Magnon man buried their dead in red ochre and indeed the first man named in the Torah, Adam, is named after the Hebrew word for red. Red also has an anachronistic flavor, looking back on the past where red (and by association a less self-driven attitude towards life) was more accepted. So when we encounter the red-filled room (the mysterious frieze covered walls complete with a red accented menorah and a red painting of a Whirling Dervish!) of Irene's mother, "good" characters Maria Clara and Aurelio wearing resplendent outfits of red, and finally the painting of Irene's mother in a formal red gown we can see where Ozpetek's sympathies lie.

A word or two about the soundtrack, I found the original musical themes to be excellently suited to the story. The quasi-baroque theme that signified Irene was great for it's monotony and feeling of restive malaise (the absolute best use of a constantly repeated baroque theme such a this would have to be in Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, with it's masterful repetitions of an 8-bar sarabande attributed to Handel). One absolutely inspired choice was a couple of seconds of an opera aria we hear as the power is flickering while Irene is chasing Benny through the house. It is of the famous aria "Ebben? ... Ne andrò lontano" from Catalani's opera "La Wally". The aria is sung by the lead soprano who is leaving home forever. As Irene's mother was a dramatic soprano, we can guess that this is a recording of her singing and that she is saying a poignant farewell to her daughter, as in the movie Irene is soon destined to never again see Benny alive. I just have one minor question of the soundtrack, why include the famous tango Yo Soy Maria? I love the song and personally could hear it all the time, but it didn't really fit here.

a real love story...not to be missed

[semc64 · 9/10 · 26 February 2005]

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!

Scenes from a cathartic journey of darkness, regret and redemption

[Aquilant · 10/10 · 21 May 2005]

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.

multi-dimensional, ambiguous, provocative

[rschmeec · 8/10 · 15 June 2006]

On the social level, the least important dimension, this is a film about the inhumanity of globalization and the possibility of some other response to the world's problems. Irene wins an award as "entrepreneur of the year," but her business career is derailed by contact with a young waif,who combines thievery and lying with a life of service to the needy. Inspired by the girl's example, Irene gradually changes her own life style in imitation.

Irene's transformation is strongly resisted by her iron-willed aunt and business associate, the villain(ess) of the film, who views her as a nut-case, introducing the theme of whether or not Irene is saintly or insane. I will not reveal how that is resolved.

Sacred Heart is a common Catholic religious symbol, referring to the Sacred Heart of Jesus as a symbol of divine love incarnate. For more than one hundred years it has been a popular devotion. There is no explicit reference in the film to this; rather, it is attributed to Irene's mother as a reference to a second heart within each of us that has to be discovered and nurtured. I might point out that this can easily be identified with the Catholic devotion; it can also be viewed as an attempt to strip the devotion of its explicit Catholic elements, to secularize it, so to speak. Other examples of ambiguity are in Irene's praying to her mother, which can be interpreted as being to her natural mother or to Mary, the Mother of God, or to both; her compassionate cradling of the pitiful Giancarlo in a pose that is modeled upon Michelangelo's Pieta; and giving away even her clothes, modeled upon the example of St. Francis. But none of these allusions are explicitly identified.

The waif's combination of thievery, lying, and self-denying service of the poor reminded me of Christ's saying, "Much has been forgiven her because she loved much." But it is her example that first inspires Irene, and Irene's example inspires the psychiatrist who treats her at the end. So we have the theme of goodness having a multiplier effect.

There is further ambiguity in the portrayal of the institutional Church. The priest is portrayed as compassionate, but troubled by doubts, being in need of consolation, which is supplied by Irene, implying that holiness trumps official office. (Nothing sexual here, this movie is about sanctity as infectious).

You may have inferred that this is a movie about women, and that is true. All the five main characters are women; the priest is important, but the psychological dynamics are between the women.

I could say more about the way golden lighting shining in darkness is employed throughout the film, the pattern of what I call "blessing music" that punctuates the plot, the use of parallel details to provide structure, etc. These reward reviewing and repondering.

Good feelings at one-fifty per pound

[massimobrambilla · 9 March 2005]

The first question which comes to mind, after departing in such a disdainful way from a non-negligible amount of perfectly good money, of course is : "Why did the director select the two main characters (Bobulova and Poggio) amongst those blessed with a facial and emotional expressiveness ranging from tuna fish to Rocky Balboa ?". Indeed, if you discount the makeup efforts to provide Bobulova with reddened eyes and shades in the second half of the film, it would be a nice exercise to get a DVD, freeze the images and superimpose her faces in moments of puzzlement, fear, pain, anger. OK, maybe the nostrils shrink or widen, Rudolph-Valentino's-wise, but it's a hard call. That, anyway, you can tell better because the number of close-ups providing views of Bobulova's cute, possibly highly engineered, french nose is indeed mystifying. The director is the same of the beautiful Hammam and the nice Ignorant Fairies, but the "Finestra di Fronte" was considerably worse and this movie actually left me irritated, offended by the lack of intelligence and introspection. Please, do not sell me the ghost stuff as "poeticity" or "misticity"; if you want a movie dealing with inner feelings of sacredness, interior drama between human closeness and materialism, refer to The Decalogue or to the production of A.Wayda. Ozpetek has learned very well the widespread Italian technique of selling good will and good feelings cheap, beefing up things with didascalic iconography and redundant lines. The movie pillages from the Annual Review of Human Heartbreaking Cases and the Socio-Psychological Discomfort Newsletters, losing credibility with each yard of film. The cute girl is one of the less credible characters (and not only for those who had something to do with actual social cases) and even more irritating is how she enters the esoteric jangle which inturbidates the waters, wherein the plot sinks, trying to turn dead leaves into goldfish fakes. The moment we learned the poor darling had departed, both my fiancée and myself knew what she was after, how's that for an intimate tuning of souls ? Nah, maybe it's just a dead giveaway of the movie… I am also curious about the anti-nausea parafarmaceutics consumption involved by the movie takes, as the director seems to earnestly believe that tossing a camera in compulsive circles, swoops, lateral slides etc. can really convey to the public the sensation of being watching a great, subtly intimistic movie. I was more prone to thinking of the poor cameramen though, but well, maybe today such takes are unmanned… There are a few good actors in the movie: as usual the older ones, those who did not learn to act the TV-production way but come from a real actor studio and a movie career: Erika Blanc is possibly the only credible character, while Lisa Gastoni is unguiltily forced into a character which is the parody of the "baddie lady" in the standard Italian soap-opera. OK, since I put a "spoiler" warner, I can also tell you that the final scene (Warning: here's the spoiler! Guess what?: A camera slide on the mansion's ancient frescoes, where we see the dead Benny darling appearing in them -Duh!- , thus superimposing the figures of the mother which believed in the "sacred heart" and the girl which triggers the magical metamorphosis of an ice-cold manager into a lunatic with a pointlessly bleeding heart) could make you laugh out loud and finally walk out of the cinema towards a more enjoyable way of finishing your evening off; but since it comes at the very end, it really sounds as the last insult the movie blurts before a honest, righteous, total and blissful darkness restores the peace on the screen.

The secret heart of film-making is revealed

[robert-temple-1 · 10/10 · 3 February 2008]

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.