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Don't Believe the Hype

Better Late Then Never

Taking the road less traveled, "Dark Hearts" is an edgy indie film that explores the dynamics of love and hate, creation and destruction in a modern subculture that is reminiscent of the salons in Paris during the 18th century. Set against the backdrop of the postmodern minefield of the contemporary urban landscape, the heady mixture results in a cocktail that takes the viewer through a psychological labyrinth rarely found in mainstream film. The performances are excellent and provide insight to the shadows and light that make the characters come alive with a gritty realism against an nearly surreal backdrop. This film is a must see for thrillers that travel off the beaten path!

I was lucky enough to attend the London premier of Rudolf Buitendach's wild excursion into the shadowed souls of the LA art scene and, whilst I expected great things, the movie, so resolute and confident in tone, caught me off guard. Firstly Dark Heart's freshness, much like the tubes of blood dimmed paint that scatter Buitendach's canvas of broken, sometimes lost characters, chimes through on every scene. There's also a knowingness and grasp of genre but a giddy willfulness to play the trump card and subvert expectations. It's true to say the threads of Jarmusch, Lynch, Bigelow and even perhaps Hal Hartley wind their way through this shady pantheon of the downtown LA art scene but director Buitendach juggles and panhandles them into his own unique voice. There's so much to admire here and so much fun to be had. The kind of stylistic bloodletting we haven't seen in such a long time, a smoky, mercurial turn by a wildly beautiful and wanton mysterious Sonja Kinski, a strong, soulful discovery in Lucas Til's Sam, who, ensnared by the brutally sexual and fetishistic interplay of our main characters, becomes our voice in the wilderness, our 'conscience' when the insanity kicks in full tilt. A special mention must also go to Suzanne Barnes costume design, sparse and dense in equal measure, which in itself very cleverly becomes indivisible from the set and production design. The use of Guy Theaker's moody, murky score shades and colors our ensemble of broken souls nicely whilst Kyle Schmid, Juliet Landau, Goran Visnjic and Rachel Blanchard all turn in compelling, memorable performances in a feature film debut completely worthy of your attention. Buitendach is clearly a director to watch, and watch closely. Delve in to Dark Hearts. You'll come out bloody and tangled, delirious and spent...but it's a exhilarating trip you'll want to savour again.

This film was remarkable for its lack of movement. There is indeed something of a story line, but it has no motion or tension to it. The feeling is flat and inconsequential from beginning to end. The giveaway is that you are not drawn into either the story or the characters. The idea of blood as an essential component of this artist's work has a "so what" resonance to it, i.e. it's a fact but there is no reason to care. The writing is embarrassingly ridden with clichés, and are lines are delivered by characters with no depth and actors with no breadth. While on the face of them certain developments are dramatic, you are consistently left with the feeling that nothing is happening. You want to be drawn in, but the story and the writing won't let you.Take a chance if you feel like it, but I found this film to be one of the worse I've seen in a very long time. Not at all recommended.

Dark Hearts is a vampire story that isn't a vampire story—a figurative take on well-worn folktales characterized by a literal thirst for blood, heightened sexuality, and bodily immortality. Such folklore has been exploited time and again by shrewd marketers targeting young adults—the demographic most driven by hormones, afflicted with delusions of invincibility, and unschooled in artistic discrimination. DH strikes at the core of these primordial desires but raises the creative bar by taking the literal to the figurative. It's been argued that all successful artists attain immortality through fame as do the subjects they choose to depict—so long as each model's essence is truly captured by the artist, and perhaps even sacrificed by the model for the sake of the work. If this be the case, then screenwriter Christian Piers Betley has successfully married the symbolic immortality of fine art to the time-honored vampiric folklore to engender a unique brand of bloodlust and a far more plausible anti-heroic struggle for immortality. Betley's story flourishes under the direction of Rudolf Buitendach (a man with an apparent love for the industrial underbelly of Los Angeles) who draws impressively visceral performances from stars Kyle Schmid (who plays struggling artist, Colson) and Lucas Till (Colson's naive younger brother, Sam) as well as from newcomer Sonja Kinski (sultry singer and kept girl, Fran) who moves deftly between femme fatale and fragile waif. Theme-wise, other volatile ingredients in the pot include fraternal rivalry, psychological addiction, paranoia, mental/physical abuse, and men with guns—all of the makings of a complex thriller and a Shakespearean tragedy. Some characters could have been imbued with a bit more dimension. For example, Goran Visnjic plays the all-too-familiar violent mobster with no apparent motive beyond a psychopathic need to possess and harm. Overall, however, DH is a winning, atmospheric debut piece from an up-and-coming filmmaker whose future work I await with anticipation.