El lado oscuro del corazón

A film about a poet and his love for a hooker; the poet and his friendship with his artistic friends; the poet and his run-ins with the beautiful Death; the poet and his poems. A poetic film.

Another magic and unmistakable film by the Argentinean director and screenwriter Eliseo Subiela.

This is the story of Oliverio, a poor poet without success and his personal quest to find his perfect woman.

This is a story of non-mainstream art and artists who live their lives fully, with coherence, and unconventionally. This is a movie about the importance of poetry and Art in daily life, and about how perfection can be sometimes found in somebody else's rubbish bin.

In this movie, Subiela has the ability to talk about sex and passion in an explicit way, yet full of lyricism and without vulgarity. He harmoniously mixes the conscious, the subconscious and surrealist elements in an easy to understand way. Subiela creates a reality that is personal and real for dreamer Oliverio, real to him, although unreal to us. Subiela also creates a world of alternatives lives within reality as not everybody lives the same, thinks the same, or approaches reality and the world in the same way.

This movie has memorable poetic dialogs, with the intervention of the late Argentinean poet Benedetti (who plays a small role and recites some poems in German in a brothel), the surreal conversations of Oliverio with Death (played by Nacha Guevara) as if they were two friends or lovers who have known each other forever, or his conversations on Time with a cow. In fact, there are so many magic moments in this film that they are impossible to list here.

The downs of the movie are two to me. The first, is the performance by the leading actor, Dario Grandinetti, who I found painful to watch, as he overacts badly all the time; not even his gorgeous naked body was able to make me forget his performance. The second down is the footage, as the movie is 2 hours long and overcrowded with dialogs of great philosophical depth, which can bring you to desperation and give you a headache. I think that a reduction of the footage and the chopping of some of the scenes/dialogs would have helped the movie to get along in a more fluid way without losing any depth.

This movie is full of magic, onirism, surrealism, poetry, and human depth. It is not easy to watch, but mesmerizing at the same time. However, you just have to be ready to watch it, as this is not a film for lazy watchers!

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

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?

A masterpiece of poetry & magical realism. The "comic" device of the poet's dialogues with death is sheer brilliance; the many ways a heart can be used are explored masterfully; the friendship between the three Dionysian male friends is a delight. Rent this film. Keep it a few extra days and watch it again. It's hard to find, but definitely belongs on your "Ten Best" list.