Corazón iluminado (1996)

English title: Foolish Heart.

Synopsis (spoilers from beginning to end): Juan is a young man living in Buenos Aires in the early Sixties. His father is a door-to-door salesman with a gambling addiction; he is training Juan to become a salesman as well. Juan's friends are involved with esoteric practices; one of them is an old photographer who invented a device that purportedly photographs the soul of a person. One day Juan meets Ana in his circle of friends and a mutual attraction arises between them, even though Ana is engaged to an older man. Ana and Juan start seeing each other and Juan learns that Ana suffers from severe psychiatric disorders, having previously been committed to an institution, and being now under constant medication. Juan's friends take a picture of themselves with the "soul catcher" and the place where Ana was supposed to appear in the photo has only a smear of intense brightness. Juan's father frowns upon Juan's relationship with Ana, and also upon Juan's aspirations to become a filmmaker. Ana and Juan have a fight and during their subsequent separation Ana gets involved with a pimp who enslaves her into prostitution. Juan rescues her and shelters her, but one day she vanishes; later he learns that she has been institutionalized again. Juan visits her and helps her escape. Together they elope from their families. On the run from the police, they check into a hotel, where they engage in the serial ingestion of Ana's sleeping pills. They are rescued and taken to a hospital; Ana is unconscious by then. After that, they don't meet again and Juan assumes (or is told, it is not clear) that Ana is dead. Many years later, Juan is a successful filmmaker living in California, and returns to Argentina because his father is ill. He seeks his old friends out and learns that Ana is alive. He meets a seductive woman in a church and follows her to a building where they have sex. In the following day he goes to the place where Ana lives and speaks with her through the intercom, but she refuses to see him and sends him away. He meets the seductive woman again on the beach, and a stranger takes a photo of them. He runs into that woman again at the hospital where his father was, and urges her to reveal who she really is but she runs away. When he sees her the next day in a pier, he stabs her to death. His father's condition worsens and he dies. Juan returns to Los Angeles, and, while on the plane, someone hands him an envelope with a photo inside. It's the picture that was taken on the beach with him and the seductive woman; instead of her face, all we see is a bright smear.

Appraisal: This is an emotionally gripping film. Babenco has an eye for composition and handles the individual scenes very well. Mendonça and Lopes steal the respective portions of film they are in and are responsible for much of the film's strength. The film explores the interesting concept of the mixed-up feelings that disturbed women arouse on some men; they are viewed in dual terms, both as suffering, fragile creatures and as mysterious seductresses. This is possibly akin to Cet obscur objet du désir, slightly. Otherwise, the film brings to mind certain aspects of Tender Is the Night. Mad Love (1995) is a closer relative, I think. The film is largely successful and is a rewarding experience for those who take it on its own lyrical, confessional terms.

Rating: 65