Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here with one of the most interesting films I've seen so far this year. Plus it has Asia Argento playing a junkie hooker. There is a God.

The backstory to this Asia Argento-directed film is probably more interesting than the finished product, and the finished product is damn compelling. The story of young author JT Leroy is one for the ages. In 2000, he published a semi-autobiographical novel called Sarah and literary critics raved. A year later, his second novel, The Heart Is Deceitful Above all Things, saw equally critical acclaim. The books were depictions of a terrible upbringing and the all-too-evil things that people do to each other. Celebrities not only read Leroy’s works, but they claimed friendships with the elusive writer. He was actually spotted at various functions, interviews, and press events. Leroy also went on to write the powerful script for Gus Van Sant’s Elephant. Eventually, actress Argento (Land of the Dead) acquired the rights to adapt and direct The Heart Is Deceitful.

Just last month, it was revealed by The New York Times revealed that Leroy was a completely fictitious identity. In fact, he was a she, a woman named Laura Albert, and that Albert’s sister-in-law was playing Leroy in public. None of this makes this film (or the novels) any less believable. In fact, I found it nearly impossible to take my eyes off the screen.

Perhaps more than any other film I’ve seen on the subject of the children of prostitutes and drug addicts, The Heart Is Deceitful assembles a devastating character study of Jeremiah (played young by Firewall’s Jimmy Bennett and slightly older by twins Cole and Dylan Sprouse), whose whore-junkie mother Sarah (Argento in a fiercely evil performance) has no interest in shielding her child from the horrors of her life. She wants to immerse him in her filth. After forcibly removing Jeremiah from a seemingly wonderful foster home, Sarah forces hardship after hardship on her child. A succession of boyfriends (including one played by an unrecognizable, makeup-free Marilyn Manson) and homes leave the boy feeling lost and lonely. For a brief time, Jeremiah is sent to live with his ultra-Christian grandparents (Peter Fonda and Ornella Muti), who have several young men and women under their fundamentalist care.

Although we rarely stop to think about the children of these kinds of parents, it stands to reason that not every substance-abusing mother or father is trying to shield their self-destructive lifestyle from their kids, and The Heart Is Deceitful probably is not an extreme example of people like this. But I’ve never seen anything quite this eye-opening. The movie occasionally falls into indie-film formula with off-beat casting (including appearances by Ben Foster, Kip Pardue, Jeremy Sisto, Michael Pitt, John Robinson, and an uncredited Winona Ryder), but Argento’s handling of the 24-hour chaos that is Jeremiah’s life is nothing short of perfect. The original score by Billy Corgan simply drives the hardcore point home.

Although the mystery of whether Leroy’s writings are born in truth or not may never be known, I maintain that, if the work stands on its own and has a profound impact on reader/viewers, what difference does it make? Argento’s approach to drug addiction and sexual destruction is different, but no less disturbing, than Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, and that is company worth keeping.

Capone

Asia, let me lick the blood from your junkie holes!