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MÁLAGA 2022

Review: Wandering Heart

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- It’s impossible not to adore Argentinian thesp Leonardo Sbaraglia after he paints such a believable and heart-rending portrait of a man adrift, wallowing in a lack of affection

Review: Wandering Heart
Leonardo Sbaraglia in Wandering Heart

Leonardo Sbaraglia can already start clearing a shelving unit in his house, because he’s going to be filling it up with trophies in the coming months. While he earned himself the Silver Biznaga for Best Actor at the 25th Málaga Film Festival a few days ago (see the news), that’s just the beginning of an avalanche of accolades and praise that will surely start showering down upon him. Because his work in Wandering Heart, the second feature by his namesake Leonardo Brzezicki, is quite simply stunning.

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It may be the case that the uncensored nudity of his protagonist – as the actor croons George Michael’s weepy ballad “Careless Whisper” by a swimming pool – is being used as one of the coups de théâtre when advertising Wandering Heart, but said physical exposure does not have as big an impact as the emotional and facial transitions of an actor who, with exactly the same conviction and talent, conveys devastation, drug-addled highs, disorientation, madness and desperation on the screen.

It’s a whole recital hinging on looks and gestures, always delivered to absolute perfection, in order to capture the downward spiral of the tormented, sensitive and contradictory Santiago, who, “like a cow without a cowbell” – as Chus Lampreave described his daughter in The Flower of My Secret – loses his way in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro during the night and the wee hours, in search of affection: because, as the title suggests, he does indeed have a wandering heart.

Here, Sbaraglia once again breathes life into a gay man on screen (having also done so in stage plays), as he did in Burnt Money and Pain & Glory [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Antonio Banderas
Q&A: Pedro Almodóvar
film profile
]
, except now, in addition to this, he is the father of a teenage girl (Miranda de la Serna) who is about to fly the nest. This imminent farewell will serve as the trigger that pushes this successful chef to roam between former lovers, threesomes and orgies, in an attempt to fill his emotional void.

Admittedly, Brzezicki’s intense, chilling and frenzied movie is not particularly original when it comes to showing how a human being can toy with plumbing the depths of self-destruction (Leaving Las Vegas, That Most Important Thing: Love, Looking for Mr. Goodbar and The Wounded Man must surely be among the filmmaker’s favourite dramas), and some of the characters can end up seeming excessively distraught and querulous, but its lead actor – who carries the entire weight of the storyline on his shoulders – pulls off a miracle: the audience never stops being fascinated by this romantic, lonesome animal in pain, during his wistful and wildly enthusiastic existential adventure, in which he flirts with the anguish of a suicidal man, chauvinistic violence and chemsex.

Wandering Heart, the cast of which is rounded off by Eva Llorach, is a co-production between Argentina, Spain, Brazil, the Netherlands and Chile, staged by outfits Ruda Cine, Keplerfilm, RT Features, Quijote Films and Vértigo Films, which hits Spanish cinemas on Friday 1 April, courtesy of Vértigo Films.

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(Translated from Spanish)

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