Running time: 96 minutes
Starring: Olivia Williams, Helena Bonham-Carter, Paul Bettany, Eleanor Bron, Simon Day
Rating 3 out of 10
If Merchant Ivory or a nice dose of The House of Eliott on a Saturday night is your thing, then The Heart of Me is for you. Full of controlled English emotion and sturdy pauses, and centring on the trials of a well-to-do household it's utterly undemanding and unsurprising stuff. On the other hand if period dramas where the upper lips are ultra stiff leave you cold then you might be better off choosing something else when it arrives for what looks set to be a very short run at your local cinema. London, 1934. Rickie (Bettany) is an aspiring middle class businessman, apparently happily married to the effervescent Madeleine (Williams). But there's a fly in the ointment in the shape of Madeleine's sister Dinah (Bonham-Carter) to whom Rickie is attracted. The attraction is reciprocated and soon sex with the sister-in-law bcome a regular occurrence, with Rickie staying later and later at work and even having a big bang of his own to celebrate the New Year. Inevitably the lovers cannot remain secret and their eventual discovery leads to trauma and tragedy.
There are several things wrong with The Heart of Me. Firstly its distinct lack of pace and refusal to shift tone makes it a relentlessly sombre affair from the opening frame. Secondly the script offers three fine British actors very little to work with: all end up as cardboard characters that might have appeared in countless films of the genre. The number of scenes where lines are left unfinished (to demonstrate how difficult it is to express emotions) becomes quickly very tedious. We never really learn very much about these characters in spite of the fact that thirdly there is very little story to convey: the screenplay refuses to draw out anything much of interest about the three of them. Finally the whole thing looks very dull: where the reported £5m budget was spent is anyone's guess.
The film has a similar feel to Bonham Carter's earlier work Keep The Aspidistra Flying, a film that hardly anyone went to see. Both films provoke the same question: why make a mid-war movie about British mores if it is going to be so utterly one-dimensional?
