Argento has made a ferocious film including her own committed performance, but like her character, she loses control in the final goings.
Comment
03/20/06
The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (2006)
42
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:48
Fresh:20
Rotten:28
Average Rating:5/10
Consensus: The film aims to shock, but there is no higher reason for the parade of sordid images except to be "cool."
Runtime: 1 hr 38 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Based on the novel by the mysterious and controversial JT LeRoy, Asia Argento's THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS is a penetrating look at the emotional and physical bonds between mother and... [More]
Starring: Asia Argento, Jimmy Bennett, Cole Sprouse, Dylan Sprouse
Director: Asia Argento
Reviews for The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things
It's a taxing bit of exploitation, which, although you're glad to know it's a work of fiction, doesn't exactly make a case for itself as art.
03/18/06
Top CriticAt best, this film raises an all-too-relevant question: Are true-life stories interesting because they're true? Or because they're interesting? At worst, it raises a different question: What if they're neither true nor interesting?
03/18/06
There is no redemption, no surcease, and as the film ends the barbarity continues. This film made me intensely uncomfortable, but that was its intention.
03/18/06
Top CriticThe film is as captivating as it is perverse.
03/11/06
Given Argento's willingness to attempt the controversial book at all, she pulls a surprising number of punches.
03/10/06
Like LeRoy's novels, the movie finds something hep about degradation, neglect, and eating out of dumpsters. It calls to mind the Zoolander joke about a fashion line, 'Derelict,' inspired by crack whores and hoboes.
03/10/06
Stripped of all its lurid backstory, the fictional tale is revealed onscreen to be a mere catalog of horrors, an ugly grafting together of Dickens and America's Most Wanted.
03/10/06
Watchable in a train-wreck kind of way, but you'll probably want to take a shower afterwards.
03/10/06
This is an execrable movie.
03/10/06
Argento seems to have been in on the JT LeRoy scam, but it doesn't much matter -- she's captured the underbelly of trucker culture quite nicely.
03/10/06
Top CriticUltimately sabotaged by Argento's own deliriously uncontrollable hysterics.
03/09/06
Viewer discretion is advised, if only because it's well-nigh unwatchable.
03/09/06
Top CriticThe drug- and punk rock-milieu and cinematic technique of this film further debase what was low to begin with.
03/09/06
This film's heart is not deceitful, merely obvious and overbearing.
03/09/06
The emotionless, overwrought movie's lack of psychological depth or dramatic verisimilitude makes the boy's grim odyssey a curiously remote and unshocking horror show.
03/09/06
Top CriticA degraded and degrading film, of interest only because it’s symptomatic of so much that’s wrong with the drearily repetitive tabloid mentality that has infected not just the news media, but the whole culture industry.
03/09/06
Emotionally engaging at times, but its general formlessness renders it little more than an excuse for Argento to show off her directing chops, which she does quite well.
03/09/06
Argento's entire performance is an act of exhibitionism, and so is the movie, which would have done well to drop that cynical and verbose title and substitute something catchier.
03/08/06
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things has a daring that's hard to dismiss, even when it only amounts to Argento shamelessly getting off on human rot.
03/08/06
Latest News for The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things
March 03, 2006:
Is this an attack on Christian fundamentalists? 
More...
March 02, 2006:
Weinsteins Set To Make "Deceitful" Author J.T. LeRoy Biopic
There's almost a week to go before Asia Argento's "The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things" opens, so it's perfect timing for The Weinstein Company to announce they've... More...
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