Tadanobu Asano and Nathalia Acevedo star as lovers on the run in Khavn’s visually stunning RUINED HEART
RUINED HEART: ANOTHER LOVE STORY BETWEEN A CRIMINAL AND A WHORE (Khavn, 2014)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Thursday, July 2, 10:15
Festival runs June 26 – July 8
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com
www.subwaycinema.com
If you’re in the mood for something very different at the fourteenth annual New York Asian Film Festival, look no further than Khavn de la Cruz’s Ruined Heart: Another Love Story Between a Criminal & a Whore. Expanding his fifteen-minute 2012 short, Khavn has created a visually arresting film that weaves its way through the gritty streets of an almost postapocalyptic Manila slum bursting with flashes of red, yellow, blue, and green. Using virtually no dialogue — the only words are from occasional poetry and several songs, and the very few times that characters speak, no translation is offered — Khavn tells the story of a Criminal (Japanese star Tadanobu Asano) on the run with a Whore (Mexican actress Nathalia Acevedo), attempting to get away from the Godfather (Filipino poet and playwright Vim Nadera). The multinational cast also includes the Friend (Andrew Puertollano) and the Lover (Russian-born actress Elena Kazan, who grew up in Berlin and now lives in Mumbai), but the real stars are Khavn’s mesmerizing score, Frances Grace Mortel’s art direction, Frances Soeder’s production design, Carlo Francisco Manatad’s frantic editing, and Christopher Doyle’s dizzying cinematography, which at times has Asano doing the camerawork himself as he runs through small passageways and back alleys.
The film feels like an intriguing blend of Wong Kar-wai, Kenneth Anger, Derek Jarman, Takashi Miike, and David Lynch, a punk opera tone poem with images that range from the beautiful to the extremely disturbing, a treat for the eyes and ears while confounding the mind, from the opening credits until the screen goes black. The soundtrack features songs by Stereo Total, Bing Austria & the Flippin’ Soul Stompers, the Radioactive Sago Project, and Scott Matthew, but it’s Khavn’s hauntingly gorgeous theme that will stay with you. (Khavn, an award-winning Filipino digital filmmaker and author, also appears in the seventy-minute flick as the Pianist.) Ruined Heart is screening at the Walter Reade Theater on July 2 at 10:15; the New York Asian Film Festival continues at Lincoln Center through July 8 with more than three dozen new and old films from China, Korea, Japan, Cambodia, and other Southeast Asian countries, including Li Ruijin’s River Road, Kiki Sugino’s Taksu, Hong Seok-jae’s Socialphobia, Yim Soon-Rye’s The Whistleblower, and Kinji Fukasaku’s Cops vs. Thugs.