5. Heartless (2009)
Last year’s list had director Philip Ridley’s previous film The Passion of Darkly Noon, this year I had to include his follow-up film made fifteen years later, which is similarly undervalued. Heartless is a romantic Faust like tale set on the streets of South London and taps into the same vein of fear that Eden Lake did so effectively. Like it or not the latter half of last decade was dominated by fear. Fear of terrorism, fear of youth and fear of the hooded aimless youngsters on the streets. This is what gives power to the ideas that Ridley conveys, suggesting the atmosphere gives power to those who seek to manipulate the fearful. A superb and heart-breaking Jim Sturgess plays a shy young man with a birthmark that covers half his face, he starts to see hooded lizard like creatures on the streets at the same time that he falls in love with a model his photographer brother has been working with.
After a terrible tragedy he is approached by the satanic Papa B who promises to make his life better in exchange for him doing a favour later on. The birthmark is burned away and for a time his life is improved and he gets the life he wants with the girl of his dreams, but then Papa B comes calling in the favour which leads to horrific bloodshed and more tragedy. Stylish and haunting, nonetheless Heartless has rather too many ideas for its own good and can’t quite marshal them all into a fully complete whole. It plays out like Vanilla Sky with satanic overtones and quite nicely captures the climate of fear that we lived in during the second half of the last decade thanks to the tabloids. Heartless is moving and brilliant for the most part and definitely feels overlooked.
