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The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things | |
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Directed by | Asia Argento |
Screenplay by |
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Based on | The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things by JT Leroy |
Produced by |
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Starring |
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Cinematography | Eric Alan Edwards |
Edited by | Jim Mol |
Music by | |
Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 98 minutes [1] |
Countries |
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Language | English |
Box office | $211,355 [2] |
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things is a 2004 drama film co-written and directed by Asia Argento and starring Argento, Jimmy Bennett, Dylan Sprouse and Cole Sprouse (with Bennett and the Sprouse brothers sharing the role as Jeremiah). The screenplay by Argento and Alessandro Magania is based on JT LeRoy's novel of the same name. The film received a limited release in North America on March 10, 2006, shortly after Laura Albert was revealed to be the actual author of the JT LeRoy books.
The film concerns a tattered relationship between Sarah, a drug addict, and her young son, Jeremiah. Their life together is marked by Sarah's substance abuse. The title is taken from Jeremiah 17:9. [3]
Sarah (Asia Argento) is the young mother of Jeremiah who has him move back in with her after spending his early years with a stable foster family. Their life soon becomes hectic with Sarah not only giving her young son drugs, but also giving him a chaotic life on the road.
Sarah becomes involved with a series of men who treat her and seven-year-old Jeremiah (Jimmy Bennett) poorly, and she uses them as an excuse to abandon her son. She disappears to Atlantic City with her boyfriend, Emerson (Jeremy Renner), and then deserts him; Emerson returns to their home and rapes Jeremiah. After a trip to the hospital, Jeremiah's grandmother (Ornella Muti) takes him to a West Virginian radical Christian cult led by his grandfather (Peter Fonda). After he has been three years with the cult, Sarah returns to reclaim the 11-year-old Jeremiah (Dylan and Cole Sprouse).
Sarah's current lover, Kenny (Matt Schulze), a truck driver, eventually abandons them at a truck stop while Sarah is soliciting. Sarah realizes that if she is going to keep her men, she cannot say Jeremiah is her son. She persuades Jeremiah to cross-dress so that he can act as her "little sister"; and Jeremiah's cross-dressing evolves to include his mother's seduction techniques. After dressing up as a "baby doll" version of Sarah which consisted of her makeup, her white nightgown and her red high heel pumps, Jeremiah seduces Jackson (Marilyn Manson), his mother's latest man, who initially tries to rebuff the boy's advances, but then gives in. Sarah is furious with Jackson for giving in to the boy's advances and also with Jeremiah for ruining her panties with drops of blood on them. She then takes Jeremiah and leaves.
Later, they are in a house where the basement houses a methamphetamine laboratory, which later blows up with Sarah's latest boyfriend inside. After fleeing, and while detoxing from methamphetamine, Sarah is convinced that everyone is after them and that only certain foods are edible (mainly chips and sugary soda). She convinces Jeremiah that if they eat anything but these foods, they will be poisoned which leads them to a failed attempt to shoplift at a grocery store; afterwards, Jeremiah finds and eats a hamburger from a dumpster. His mother, in a state of "meth psychosis", is convinced the food he ate was poison, and makes him drink ipecac in order to make him better and rid him of any "poisons".
Jeremiah wakes up in the hospital with his grandmother beside him. She tells him that Sarah is in the psychiatric ward. Later that night, Sarah collects Jeremiah from his hospital room, and rather than have him go back to the cult, she clutches his hand, and they walk off into the world in their hospital gowns. The final scene is of Sarah and Jeremiah driving away.
Although the soundtrack to the film was never commercially released, here is a list of different songs featured in the film, along with the scenes they are played in.
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things received mixed to negative reviews from critics. Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports a 40% rating based on 50 reviews. The site's consensus states: "The film aims to shock, but there is no higher reason for the parade of sordid images except to be 'cool'." [4] On Metacritic, the film has a 27 out of 100 rating based on 22 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". [5]
Bennett portraying the son of her character in this film was referenced in the later 2018 allegations that Argento sexually assaulted him when he was 17 years old. [6]
Asia Argento is an Italian actress and filmmaker. The daughter of filmmaker Dario Argento, she has had roles in several of her father's features and achieved mainstream success with appearances in XXX (2002), Land of the Dead (2005) and Marie Antoinette (2006). Her other notable acting credits include Queen Margot (1994), Let's Not Keep in Touch (1994), Traveling Companion (1996), Last Days (2005) and Islands (2011). Argento is the recipient of several accolades, including two David di Donatello awards for Best Actress and three Italian Golden Globes. Her directorial credits include The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004) and Misunderstood (2014).
Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy, or simply JT LeRoy is a literary persona created in the 1990s by American writer Laura Albert. LeRoy was presented as the author of three books of fiction, which were purportedly semi-autobiographical accounts by a teenage boy of his experiences of poverty, drug use, and emotional and sexual abuse in his childhood and adolescence from rural West Virginia to California. Albert wrote these works, and communicated with people in the persona of LeRoy via phone and e-mail. Following the release of the first novel Sarah, Albert's sibling-in-law Savannah Knoop began to make public appearances as the supposed writer. The works attracted considerable literary and celebrity attention, and the authenticity of LeRoy has been a subject of debate, even as details of the creation came to light in the 2000s.
Michael Pitt is an American actor, model, and musician. Pitt is best known for his roles in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers (2003), Gus Van Sant's Last Days (2005), Michael Haneke's Funny Games (2007), and for portraying Jimmy Darmody in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire (2010–2011).
Dylan Thomas Sprouse and Cole Mitchell Sprouse are American actors. They are twins and are sometimes referred to as the Sprouse brothers or Sprouse Bros. Their first major theatrical film role was in the 1999 comedy Big Daddy, in which they co-starred with Adam Sandler. They later appeared in several television sitcoms and starred in the television film I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus and straight-to-DVD Just for Kicks.
Cheaper by the Dozen 2 is a 2005 American family comedy film directed by Adam Shankman. It is a sequel to the 2003 film Cheaper by the Dozen and stars Steve Martin, Bonnie Hunt, Tom Welling, Piper Perabo, and Hilary Duff with Kevin G. Schmidt, Alyson Stoner, Jacob Smith, Forrest Landis, Liliana Mumy, Morgan York, Blake Woodruff, and Brent and Shane Kinsman reprising their roles as members of the 12-child Baker family, alongside Eugene Levy, Carmen Electra, Shawn Roberts, Jaime King, Robbie Amell, Taylor Lautner, and Jonathan Bennett as new characters. It tells the story of the Baker family as they go on a vacation and contend with a rival family, the Murtaughs.
James Michael Bennett is an American actor. He is known for his roles as a child actor in Daddy Day Care, Hostage, The Amityville Horror, Poseidon, Evan Almighty, Orphan, Shorts, and as young James T. Kirk in the 2009 film Star Trek. He also starred on the ABC series No Ordinary Family as JJ Powell, a teenager gifted with vast intelligence after a plane crash.
Dylan Thomas Sprouse is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Zack Martin on the Disney Channel series The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and its spin-off, The Suite Life on Deck, where he starred alongside his twin brother Cole Sprouse. He is an owner of the All-Wise Meadery in Brooklyn, New York.
Cole Mitchell Sprouse is an American actor and photographer. He is known for his role as Cody Martin on the Disney Channel series The Suite Life of Zack & Cody (2005–2008) and its spin-off series The Suite Life on Deck (2008–2011). In his early career, he appeared in various projects alongside his twin brother Dylan Sprouse. From 2017 to 2023, Sprouse starred as Jughead Jones on The CW television series Riverdale.
Laura Victoria Albert is an American author who invented the literary persona JT LeRoy, whom Albert described as an "avatar." She published various works of purportedly autobiographical fiction under the LeRoy name before being revealed as the true author. Albert has also used the aliases Emily Frasier and Speedie, and published other works as Laura Victoria and Gluttenberg. After the true authorship was revealed, Albert was sued for fraud for having signed a film-option contract as the fictitious LeRoy; a jury found against her. The damages to be paid to the film company were settled out of court.
Inferno is a 1980 Italian supernatural horror film written and directed by Dario Argento, and starring Irene Miracle, Leigh McCloskey, Eleonora Giorgi, Daria Nicolodi and Alida Valli. The plot follows a young man's investigation into the disappearance of his sister, who had been living in a New York City apartment building that also served as a home for a powerful, centuries-old witch. The cinematography was by Romano Albani, and Keith Emerson composed the film's musical score.
Sarah is a novel by Laura Albert, written under the name JT LeRoy, a persona that she has described as an "avatar," asserting that it enabled her to write things she could not have said as herself.
The Three Mothers is a trilogy of supernatural horror films by Italian filmmaker Dario Argento. It consists of Suspiria, Inferno, and Mother of Tears. Each film deals with one of the titular "Mothers", a triumvirate of ancient witches whose powerful magic allows them to manipulate world events on a global scale, killing anyone who discover their whereabouts, and who are determined to rule the world.
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things is a novel-like book of ten related short stories written by Laura Albert under the name JT LeRoy, a persona that she has described as an "avatar," asserting that it enabled her to write things that she was incapable of expressing as Laura Albert. These stories predate the 2000 JT LeRoy novel Sarah but were published in 2001, after Sarah was released. The title is taken from Jeremiah 17:9.
Mother of Tears is a 2007 supernatural horror film written and directed by Dario Argento, and starring Asia Argento, Daria Nicolodi, Moran Atias, Udo Kier and Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni. The film has also been billed in English-speaking media as Mater Lachrymarum, The Third Mother and Mother of Tears: The Third Mother.
B. Monkey is a British-American 1998 neo-noir crime film directed by Michael Radford. Originally, Michael Caton-Jones was attached to direct the adaptation of the homonymous 1992 book by Andrew Davies, but left over creative differences.
The Suite Life Movie is a 2011 American science fiction comedy-drama television film directed by Sean McNamara, written by Michael Saltzman, and starring Dylan and Cole Sprouse, Brenda Song, Debby Ryan, Matthew Timmons, John Ducey, Matthew Glave, and Phill Lewis. The Disney Channel Original Movie is based on the pair of Disney Channel sitcoms The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and The Suite Life on Deck created by Danny Kallis and Jim Geoghan. Dylan and Cole Sprouse were also executive producers for the movie. The film premiered on March 25, 2011 on the Disney Channel. A sneak peek was shown during the Disney Channel Shake It Up New Year's event.
Barbara Sprouse is a Hungarian model. She first appeared in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in 2016. In 2019, she became a Victoria's Secret Angel. She is also an Armani Beauty ambassador.
JT LeRoy is a 2018 biographical drama film directed by Justin Kelly based on the memoir Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT Leroy by Savannah Knoop. It stars Kristen Stewart, Laura Dern, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Diane Kruger, James Jagger, Dave Brown, Jim Sturgess and Courtney Love.
Vortex is a 2021 avant-garde psychological drama film written and directed by Gaspar Noé. It stars Dario Argento as a father and author, in his first leading role, alongside Françoise Lebrun as his wife, and Alex Lutz as their son, Stéphane. The film deals with the themes of the human condition and personal problems, uses a slow, minimal cinematic approach and is almost defiantly restrained: a pockmarked, faded palette of the frame, deaf voices, and the use of low-frequency background sound.
Jade Healy is a Canadian production designer based in Los Angeles. She is known for her production design work on the films The Green Knight, Marriage Story, A Ghost Story, and I, Tonya.
Jimmy Bennett, playing Asia Argento's son, in this image from the 2004 film "The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things." Mr. Bennett has claimed that Ms. Argento assaulted him
Mr. Bennett was 7 when he was cast in "The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things," a 2004 film Ms. Argento directed, starred in and helped write. The script, based on a book by the pseudonymous writer JT LeRoy, depicts the grim relationship between a drug-addicted prostitute played by Ms. Argento and her son, played by Mr. Bennett and two other young actors. Ms. Argento's character dresses her son as a girl to lure men, and the boy is ultimately raped. In interviews and subsequent social media posts between the two over the years, they referred to each other as mother and son.