If you were to look at the poster for The Heart Knows, you’d think it was going to be a heartfelt romance that would at least ease your hunger for the sappy stuff that we’re often deprived of. But rather than a sappy romance, the film tries to be a family drama, bringing “hope” into the picture, making for a neither-here-nor-there, boring piece of media that is entirely unmemorable. This is the problem with having so many things releasing every week on platforms like Netflix, and us consuming it because we feel like we don’t have any other option. I’ve seen a few Argentinian films in my time writing about cinema, and there have been some very powerful ones that far outshine this drab and grey film that doesn’t deliver on the one promise it has to offer: heart. The film tells the story of Juan, a businessman; you know, typically inhumane and unbothered by the world as long as he makes money. But when he ends up having a heart transplant, he undergoes a transformation, a personality that feels more reminiscent of the person who gave him his heart. What follows is a predictable mess, where Juan tries to find the donor’s family and help them out, until he falls in love with his wife.
What I can’t understand is how this film doesn’t have even a single ounce of emotion to it. Here we’re looking at people struggling to keep their homes, fighting for their lives basically, and everything is straight-faced. There’s no actual fight in anybody, and the woman who is meant to have lost the love of her life barely looks sad, even when she hears her husband is vegetative but with working organs. Additionally, the film somehow doesn’t flow very nicely. It feels like it’s been force fed to us in bits and pieces and we’ve been left to connect the dots, but not in a thriller-mystery kind a way, in a “we’re lazy and didn’t feel the need to make a good film” kinda way. I know I’m being overly harsh and critical, but as someone who has to watch shows and movies all day for work, I feel like when a film like this with so much potential comes out, I find myself especially disappointed and think it’s perfectly fair to drag them, so that we can get good films instead.
When I started watching the film and realised what was going on (I had no context beforehand), it reminded me of Cecilia Ahern’s novel “Thanks For The Memories.” While I know that a novel has much more time to establish a plot and give us a detailed understanding of why someone would behave a certain way, this film doesn’t even take a second to make us understand what Juan is feeling and why. Sure, we get the concept, but how do you make it feel believable? This is already too fantasy-like to make any sense, but to add to that, nothing is contextualised, and, like I said earlier, it feels extremely erratic, making for a character who is entirely unrelatable.
But to make matters worse, for a film that is marketed as a romance (I mean, you can’t deny it after seeing the poster), there is zero chemistry and no reason for this woman to fall in love with this man. Literally, they barely interact, and when they do, it’s very professional and courteous, and suddenly they’re mad about each other? Well, we know why he is, but how could she feel it? And then the film ends so fast, like they forgot to add in an extra 5 minutes, you know the “happily ever after” bit, to make the whole thing feel impactful. So really, I found myself wondering why the heck this film was made at all.
Now, since I’m not Argentinian, I do not know the song that the film’s title is based on, so that’s another thing that I’m missing out on as a member of the global audience, but that would’ve been fine if the film was interesting enough for me to go look up its significance after i sat through it. But I do feel like the only thing I might get out of this film is finding myself a fun Argentinian song.
I want to say the performances were good, because they were pretty decent, but there was not much to do because of the shoddy script and the weird cussing as comedy. I didn’t get it at all, and as always, I’m forced to blame it on “lost in translation.” The dubbing is quite atrocious, so if you do want to watch it, I’d recommend watching it in the original Spanish language. Definitely feels much more passionate, even if the script doesn’t demand it. There’s some profanity, randomly, might I add, but nothing to worry about on the sexual side of things. The film is short, only an hour and 29 minutes, which I’m honestly glad about, because that still felt like a waste of time. This isn’t even the kind of movie to enjoy making fun of, or to cry along to. It’s just too mid in every way possible.
The transformation is deeply underwhelming, and the context of the film is vague, making the undercooked plot feel even worse than it is. For a film titled “The Heart Knows,” the attractions should be fatal, and the love so deep as to be unimaginable. Using a concept that already exists and failing to bring something at least a little bit new to it makes The Heart Knows a downright terrible movie. So much could’ve been done with this concept, but the way the film feels lazy just makes the experience of watching it feel like a group project badly handled. I’d give The Heart Knows 2 out of 5 stars.
