HEART beat
It's Valentine's Day tomorrow - but sadly it only lasts a day. Thank goodness it can always be Valentine's Day at the movies: Somewhere, Richard Gere is still carrying Debra Winger out of that factory cradled in his arms, and he won't ever put her down at the kitchen sink. In Hollywood, love never fades out in the fade-out.
Video and laser have brought a whole new dimension to romance - the 'home' date movie. Closeness is snuggling up in front of a video. In time for Valentine's Day, the date movie has been released.
SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE (video/laser, 100 minutes, 1993) Tom Hanks is a widower and he's hurting. So his son goes on the radio to ask for a new wife for his lonely father. On the other side of America, Meg Ryan is touched but she's also engaged. The son sets up a date on top of the Empire State Building on Valentine's Day - will the lovers meet? Sleepless in Seattle plays on the romantic but doomed love affair theme of the movie An Affair to Remember. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, this 1957 film with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr has also been released on laser and video. Sleepless in Seattle is an unabashedly romantic movie, inventively charting the heart's imaginary and actual journeys. It is not deep and it is predictable, but what else do you want from a romantic date with a movie? THREE OF HEARTS (video/laser, 100 minutes, 1993) Yurek Bogayevicz's unusual love triangle brings a new twist to an old tale. William Baldwin is a male escort for a sleazy company. He is hired by lesbian Kelly Lynch who has broken up with her female lover, Sherilyn Fenn. To make Fenn want her back, Lynch instructs Baldwin to break her ex-girlfriend's heart. Plans go awry when Baldwin falls in love with Fenn. His is an engaging performance in a warm, yet direct, film. The relationship between the lesbian and the gigolo is the real strength of the film and their friendship is more heart-warming than the love affair itself. The three hearts are precariously balanced - recalling the observation that 'three's company, two's none'.
MAP OF THE HUMAN HEART (video, 95 minutes, 1993) Vincent Ward's sweeping, epic love story is thrilling in both its visual excitement and its heady imagery. The central metaphor of cardiac cartography is powerfully blended into the magnificent span of the film itself.
Map-maker Patrick Bergin lands in Canada's Arctic Circle where he befriends an Inuit boy (Jason Scott Lee). When the boy develops tuberculosis, Bergin flies him to a Montreal hospital which is his first experience of the so-called civilised world. Thus begins a physical and emotional journey which spans two continents and 30 years.
In the hospital, the young boy meets a half-caste American Indian girl whose fate remains entwined with his despite separation and a world war. Their trysts lead them to the rafters of the Albert Hall and to making love on top of a barrage balloon - both sequences stunningly provoking that on-top-of-the-world feeling of lovers in love. This is a remarkable, stunning and unforgettable film.