SFIFF 52: 'Heaven's Heart'

Thank God for European cinema, where we can reasonably expect to encounter smart, articulate people negotiating delicate situations with sensitivity. Anyone would think we do not have such people or such situations, if American cinema is anything to go by, but we know that the problem is one of representation. Ordinary life is considered infertile ground for filmmaking, as are ordinary faces and bodies, middle-aged women, and so forth. More to the point, the educated class is completely off-limits, unless it is tapped for ironic or malignant purposes. Straightforwardly intelligent characters are considered dangerously suspect, perhaps because they have the whiff of the elite. These un-American types must be subverted, injured, unveiled; if they have a prominent role they will hardly ever command the sympathy of the audience and will more than likely be reduced to a pile of human rubble by movie's end.
Not so with Swedish director Simon Staho's brilliant fourth feature 'Heaven's Heart'. The characters suffer, not because they are intrinsically bad, but because there is no formula for avoiding suffering. Their recognizable middle-class dream to live in fidelity and love with one partner, to build a life together, to work and achieve success in their respective fields, proves no bulwark against disappointment, as anybody living this kind of life can probably testify. If we are happy, it is either through sheer luck or because we are flexible, and open to change, and willing to learn. More often than not the force of habit that comes to define such lives calcifies our spirits and makes us resistant to change, which change will come anyway, like a tidal wave demolishing a seawall.

Staho's four characters lead the more or less ordinary lives that middle-class educated European couples live; both couples have been married twenty years or thereabouts, one couple has a grown child, all four are old friends, and meet regularly for dinner and conversation. When the subject of infidelity is raised at one of their gatherings, the couples polarize, tensions suddenly surface, and the atmosphere begins to crackle with the electrical charge of all that has remained unexpressed - disappointment, fear, exhaustion, sexual frustration, rage, contempt - you name it. New alliances are formed, and old alliances shattered. The actors have unprecedented opportunity to shine, as each character's inner life is exposed and resources tested. The stinging dialogue is so well written we forget it is a script, which is an invaluable asset to a film of this nature, because once the script is absorbed as real we are free to notice how much communication is taking place before our eyes in terms of body language, especially of hands and eyes. Susanna's glance alone is enough to bend steel; her hate is palpable, frightening, radioactive. Similarly, the rush of new desire between Susanna's long-suffering husband Lars and her best friend Ann is so strong at one point we can feel it, if we know what desire is. This is filmmaking at its best. There are no heroes, no idealized fictional stand-ins for adolescent wishes, no stunning curves or athletic moves or drug-related incidents, no nightmares or fantasies and certainly no blood, but the emotional peaks and troughs are as extreme as any you will find in a movie this side of the Atlantic. And, best of all, they are the sort of extremes we recognize as true, which gives us at last the opportunity to experience the catharsis for which theatre used to exist. It's not Bergman - though Staho's homage to 'Scenes from a Marriage' is clear - but it is breathtaking cinema nevertheless, and contemporary.