Jonathan Caouette: Getting tarnished

Caouette's artistic narcissism has already been a huge success on the festival circuit. After Sundance, it garnered the interest of Gus Van Sant and John Cameron Mitchell (of Hedwig and the Angry Inch fame) who are now on board as executive producers. After taking the Toronto and New York festivals by storm, it finally arrives at the Festival du nouveau cinéma.

A similarly themed, if less successful, riff on an uncommonly bad childhood is The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, Asia Argento's adaptation of J.T. LeRoy's autobiographical short stories about his lonely and terrifying childhood. When his first book (of the same title) was released in 2001, the then-16-year-old writer became an underground sensation overnight; this was followed by Sarah, his insane novel about a young boy who, dressed up as a little girl, helps his lot-lizard mom make cash in the truck-stop parking lots of America.

In the film, the young LeRoy is pulled away from a loving foster family to live with his very young, peroxided and self-centred mom, played by Argento, who also directed the film. The screen version of the book, however, lacks the immediacy of LeRoy's writing - somehow, on film, the little boy's trials and tribulations seem gratuitous in the light of too-familiar tricky indie-movie grittiness.

 
 

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THe boys inner thoughts should have gone with the wind.     I believe he had a rather hard and confusing childhood. His filming himself was away to giving himself the attention nobody else was giving him.I guess the system failed him as well as his family and as sad or strange as this story maybe , to me it just isn't material for a movie. Even a documentary unless he is ready to talk in numbers of cases like his. But is sound like he had a pretty unique life. I wish he would have pulled out of it with more constructive thoughts , happier thoughts that would ensure us that besides this cruel life he has recovered and made something nice of himself. Being a mother myself I would not go and see his movie because the subject is heavy to deal with and we all have our own burdens to carry. At least he got to tell his story and I hope he felt the relief .
Maria Cecillia Silva	{1 vote}	November 25th, 2004
TARNATION and THE HEARY IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS     Oh joy, a gay narcissistic Texan who's been filming himself since puberty. I get why some people might be intrigued by this project, and admittedly IT IS intriguing, but the sheer degree of self-involvement here has got to be blinding. *** I love Asia Argento but even I could have told you this was going to be dodgy. I remember watching her quasi-autobiographical film SCARLET DIVA a few years back and although she has a good eye she's vastly more intrigued by raw emotion and melodrama at this point of her directorial career. She's been getting better but this material required a steadier hand. Anyways, I expect we'll be seeing this thing on Bravo or Showcase in the very near future.
Pedro Eggers	{3 votes}	October 20th, 2004
Mother/Hooker theme     Talk about white trash... part John Waters/part SPUN.... but a failed attempt... Good moments, Asia has guts... OR (MON TRESOR) dealt with the issue a lot better and more realistically... It was a powerful film that shouldn't be missed...
Jim Levesque	{1 vote}	October 22nd, 2004

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