Manohla Dargis - candidate for Anthony Lane Acid Tongue of the Month Prize

[swag]

http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/03/10/movies/10hear.html

From a review of the film The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things.

. . .

Since this isn't much of a film, there is nothing much else to say, other than that "The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things" was, unaccountably, badly shot in crummy-looking Super 16 film by Eric Edwards, who has done great work on films like "My Own Private Idaho." As she proved with her tackily entertaining feature debut, "Scarlet Diva," Ms. Argento doesn't know how to move the camera or her actors, but at least in that film she mostly subjected herself to abuse. Here, she puts three young actors into some squirmingly uncomfortable setups that would be no big deal if they were adults. But that's the thing about underage actors: they're also children, which is why a scene of child rape (a JT LeRoy specialty) isn't just ghastly, it's also grotesque.

Such exploitation, of course, is what puts books like "Sarah" and "The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things" on best-seller lists. Given publishing's seemingly endless appetite for memoirs filled with sexual sob stories and kinks, a JT LeRoy was inevitable. Sexual confession is hot, after all, both economically and otherwise, and here was an author who hit all the hottest buttons. That the prose is as tedious as the stories are outrageous mattered not at all, compared with such lovingly rendered degradation. For her part, Ms. Argento had something loftier in mind when she took on the book. In an interview after the film wrapped in 2003, she said she felt bound to tell this story "because I know how hard it is, especially in America, to be a single mother."

Some stuff you can't make up.