To help Tony Marsiglia fund his next feature, buy
Suzie Heartless from his
ebay-page |
Teenage Suzie (Wendy McColm) is drifting the streets in a way too short
skirt, always looking for a trick - but Suzie is far from being a happy
hooker, her sexual experiences are mostly traumatic, her customers are
psychopaths more often than not, and when she tries to hook up with other
hookers, they are just using her for their own ends. Actually, Suzie has
only become a prostitute after she got brutally raped, an event that
completely derailed her and still haunts her. Now she has taken abode in a
warehouse, and the only beings she can relate to are her cat and her stick
dolls, while even her younger self she keeps to see everywhere she goes
has turned away from her. Ultimately, Suzie and another girl (Andrea
Davis) hook up with a special psycho ... who uses a knife during sex and
stabs Suzie's friend. Overcome by compassion, Suzie drags the injured girl
with her to the hole she lives in and tries to nurse her back to health -
when even her compassion turns against her, and the girl not only dies,
but Suzie's cat - whom Suzie pictures to be the killer - starts eating her
face ... Fleeing from the horrific scene, Suzie gravely bumps her head -
and utlimately she dies in the streets from the injury, alone, since
there's nobody to care for her - but at least she got forgiveness from her
younger self. One thing up front: Suzie Heartless is a
deeply disturbing film - and it's supposed to be, too. In drastic images,
it paints the picture of a heartless world that refuses to have compassion
for an innocent girl like Suzie and instead spits her out. The world of Suzie
Heartless is mute, there is not a single word of dialogue, and the
soundscapes the film is accompanied by are positively haunting. Now making
a dialogue-less film might sound like nothing more than an artsy and
self-satisfying device, but in Suzie Heartless it makes total
sense, reflecting both the mental state of its strung-out main character
and the reaction of a merciless world to her. Add to this newcomer Wendy
McColm giving a terrific, disturbing and disturbed performance, and you've
got a great film on your hands. Not an easy film to swallow maybe, but
definitely director Tony Marsiglia's best and most mature so far, and
totally recommended.
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