Anticipation for the upcoming May 21st release of Philip Ridley’s Heartless is growing as reviews begin appearing on major film sites. Below are highlights, but readers should be cautious of the multiple SPOILERS.
Screen Daily - Heartless, a horror / fantasy / crime hybrid with a large side order of metaphysics, is the first film in 15 years from British polymath Philip Ridley. It’s decidedly rough and ready, overheated and often ludicrous - but if it’s hokum, it’s undeniably auteur hokum, and Ridley can’t be accused of compromising his vision, which – notwithstanding affinities with David Cronenberg and Clive Barker – is very much his own.
Film 4 - This is a film whose very unevenness of tone serves to trap us, as we search for a narrative centre (or ‘heart’) that quiet possibly is not there. The stars seen in the film’s final image may offer the reassurance of light after so much darkness - or alternatively they might just reflect an indifferent, chaotic universe where bloody murder can happen without rhyme or reason, and be all but forgotten by the final credit roll. Either way, Ridley takes us on a disturbing, bewildering trip that, for all the familiarity of its constituent parts, converges into something uniquely strange. VERDICT: Philip Ridley’s psychological horror - an East London-set photomontage mash-up of Faust, Lynch and Barker - is so baroquely overdetermined that while it might baffle and bemuse, it certainly will not bore.
In addition, the British Film Institute (BFI) has posted a video of the Q & A with director Philip Ridley following a screening of Heartless earlier this month. Read the description of the interview below and watch it here.
His first directorial project in fifteen years, Philip Ridley’s Heartless is a tale of urban violence and isolation that features a powerful lead performance by Jim Sturgess. In this discussion chaired by film journalist Alan Jones, the writer/director reveals the reasons for his long absence from filmmaking since 1995’s The Passion of Darkly Noon, and outlines the intriguing process his ideas undergo - “like an explosion in reverse” - before finally reaching the screen. As well as examining his inspirations and obsession with every minute design detail, Ridley also analyses the challenges now faced by smaller independent productions, and the groundbreaking strategy employed for Heartless’ May release. This special preview formed a part of the BFI’s Future Film Festival, presented in association with BBC Blast.
