Le côté obscur du coeur

I believe there are few films that can actually touch the core of someone's soul the way Eliseo Subiela does it in this film.

Subiela´s view of life through poetry is outstanding and the magical reality that surrounds the characters transport you to a dimension only felt in the enchanting coasts of Argentina

The Argentinian film El lado oscuro del corazón (1992) was shown in the U.S. with the translated title The Dark Side of the Heart. The movie was written and directed by Eliseo Subiela.

Darío Grandinetti plays Oliverio, an Argentinian poet. He travels to Montevideo where he meets Ana, played by Sandra Ballesteros. She's a beautiful prostitute. The fall in love--they have to fall in love--but she's very clear about the fact that he pays for every evening spent in her bed.

The movie is not just about a poet, but about poetry. Mario Benedetti, Juan Gelman, and Oliverio Girondo are three poets who are well known in Latin America. Characters in the movie--including Ana--recite their poetry.

That was the problem for me with this film. Prose translates fairly well, but poetry doesn't.

Nacha Guevara is the beautiful actor who portrays Death in the movie. She and Oliverio have long conversations. It's an interesting concept, like the knight playing chess against Death in Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957).

The movie worked well on the small screen. It has a strong IMDb rating of 7.6. If I spoke Spanish, I would have given it a higher rating. I rated it 7.

"El lado oscuro del corazón", is one of the best movies I´ve ever seen. Inspired in the life of Oliverio Girondo, (a great argentinian writer, intelectual father of Jorge Luis Borges, transgressor in the 30´s) it talks about life and love. The desperate search of Oliverio for a woman who could levitate after making love. Oliverio travels alternatively from Buenos Aires to Montevideo and each travel is a fantastic portrait of both cities, meanwhile the fears of Oliverio arise to a climax Don´t miss it, if you like poetry

This movie hit the box-offices in Argentina and drove the standard Hollywood movies out of their normal first places, concerning the numbers of spectators. And not without reason! The movie is not only a love story -the quest of a poet for the perfect woman- but also a story of the ´soul´ of Argentina. It is all about life and death and death in life. The style is superb: surreal shots are mixed with more ´real´shots that ensure the movie does not become totally vague and incomprehensible. The abundant use of poems adds to the magical, surreal, romantic character of the film. The movie kept (and keeps) me to my seat until the end. Subiela shows great love for film-making and this is reflected in this masterpiece. See it!

Eliseo Subiela's 1992 film The Dark Side of the Heart is an intoxicating mix of poetry, eroticism, and comic absurdity. The Argentine director, well known for such surrealistic films as Man Facing Southeast and The Last Images of the Shipwreck, outdoes expectations in Dark Side with more and better Latin-American style magic realism. The film has everything: lovers that levitate, a character having a conversation with a cow that represents his mother, talking to his other self that he keeps locked in a closet, having a heart-to-heart chat with the personification of Death (Nacha Guevara), and a love scene depicted as a roller coaster ride.

Oliverio (Dario GrandinettI), a handsome poet seeks out the perfect woman, the girl that can fly. "I don't give a damn if a woman's breasts are like magnolias or figs," he says, "if her skin feels like peach or sandpaper ... {but} on no account whatsoever will I forgive a woman who cannot fly." Those that do not fulfill his standards are summarily dismissed. With the push of a button, a trap door opens on their side of the bed, sending them falling into the abyss. Living the life of an artist in Buenos Aires, Oliverio is self-absorbed to the point of narcissism and the film looks at the world mostly from his (the male) point of view. He spends his days looking for a handout by reciting lines of his poetry to motorists and to restaurant owners in search of a free meal.

Oliverio has a friend Gustavo (André Mélancon) who insists on displaying his erotic sculptures in public but has to repeatedly bail him out of jail. The would-be poet travels to Montevideo in Uruguay where he finds Ana (Sandra Ballestros), a prostitute he tries to seduce by reciting the poetry of Mario Benedetti, only to find that she knows the poems as well as he. Refusing to fall for his too obvious come-ons, Ana is all business and rejects his obsessive pleas for romance. There's a little bit of politics as well, as Ana tells him that her husband was arrested and "disappeared" by Argentina's former dictatorship. Much to his surprise, he finds himself falling in love with Ana and pursues her until they can levitate together, soaring over tall buildings into the night sky. What better way is there to express love?