Ruined Heart (2014)

Ruined Heart: Another Love Story Between a Criminal and a Whore (2014)

Dir. Khavn De La Cruz

I don't know how it is for other folks, whether they be professional reviewer, amateur, or otherwise, but, speaking as a simple hobbyist, when it comes to putting together words to describe a viewing some are easy, some are more challenging, and a special few, like Ruined Heart, are damn near impossible to do justice to.

One of the problems from a reviewing perspective is that it has a dreamlike quality — not in a colourful and floaty way, but in how it moves from scene to scene, from emotive event to artistic intent — and attempting to put that sense of free-form structure into words without sounding pretentious and gob-shitey is difficult.

But before I even make the attempt, below the cut is the film's 'story' as described by the printed blurb on the back of the TWF Blu-ray box:

'Somewhere in Manila, a crime boss rules with an iron fist. He uses religion and violence to stay in power. What superstition and razzle dazzle don't accomplish, his goons do. To his most loyal henchman he gives the task of guarding his woman, who is headstrong and impulsive, and often gets into trouble. Before long, she falls in love with the henchman, and the star-crossed lovers decide to leave town. Fighting ensues. It is while on the run that they finally get to know each other for the first time.'

Some of that passage is evident in the story, some of it is inferred and harder to discern, while most of the first half might as well have been made up after the fact, as far as I was able to see.

Whoever wrote it seems to have been attempting to give the kind of order and meaning that would work for a conventional narrative, but Ruined Heart is definitely not conventional.

It's in the Tagalog language, but with almost no dialogue to aid comprehension it relies on feelings, delivered primarily via a combination of imagery (cinematography by Christopher Doyle) and peculiar music courtesy of Dir. Khavn and bizarre duo Stereo Total, amongst others.

Sometimes music is the driving force of the work, sometimes it's visuals, but when the two work in tandem, which is most of the time, the simple pairing is elevated to something beautiful - in a similar manner to how love doesn't need words to express itself to a like-minded recipient.

The 73 minutes running time is perhaps a little overlong, but for me it’s a more satisfying version of the telling than Khavn's 15 minutes short film (2012) of the same name that preceded it.

NOTE: the box art displays the film's full title as Ruined Heart: Another Love Story Between a Criminal and a Whore, while the disc and accompanying booklet have it written as Ruined Heart: Another Lovestory Between a Criminal and a Whore. I used the former spelling on the post title because that's how it is on the (pictured) Third Window Films Blu-ray edition that I used for review. The short film that I mentioned above is included on the disc as an extra feature.