| Foolish
Heart
Hector Babenco Bra/Fra/Arg
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| After a gap of 20 years, a man returns to his birthplace to visit his
ailing father. He learns his first girlfriend – a girl he thought was dead
after a suicide pact – is alive. In search of his adolescent love, he discovers
another woman, a woman who revives in him his adolescent passion. It is
as if the years have never passed and the two girls are one.
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This is how Hector Babenco summarises Foolish Heart, the film which
brings him back to competition in Cannes 13 years after The Kiss of the
Spider Woman won William Hurt the best actor prize – a feat he repeated
at the Academy awards the following March.
After he made At Play in the Fields of the Lord, in 1991, Babenco had a long period of sickness, which culminated in a bone marrow transplant in 1995. He does not hide his pleasure in having been selected for competition or in returning to work. "Just completing the film was a great victory," says the director of Pixote and Ironweed. Foolish Heart is the first time the Argentine-born director (who has lived in Brazil since 1969), has based a film on autobiographical material. Together with the Argentine writer, Ricardo Piglia, he developed a screenplay based on memories of his adolescence in Mar del Plata, a time when he dreamed of travelling the world and directing films. The film is split into two halves. In the first, Juan (played by the young Argentine actor Walter Quiroz) lives out the conflicts of adolescence – he does not understand his father and he does not do well at school. He hides through his friendships with older friends. Juan meets Ana (the Brazilian actress Maria Luisa Mendonea), an unstable youth with a history of mental problems who fascinates him. When a group of friends decide to prove through photography that the human soul exists, the young couple live out an intense love story which ends in a suicide pact. 20 years later, Juan, now played by Argentine actor Miguel Angel Sola, is back and gets involved with Lilith (Brazil's Xuxa Lopes) in a relationship which promises a surprising end. In his first venture into autobiographical material, Babenco is proud he has "escaped entirely from wallowing in nostalgia". He explains. "The film does not employ flashback. It did not interest me to tell the story as something that happened in the past, but rather to investigate its repercussions in the present for a man dominated by sentiments so radical in the two phases of his life." The end of the film leaves open various questions about the nature of the biographical history. "My memories were the starting point for the screenplay," says Babenco. "Not my biographical memory, but my emotional one, which underwent various metamorphoses until it was transformed into fictional material. In one sense, I say that perhaps the best way to tell the truth is through a big lie." The director remembers that when he was hospitalised, recovering from his bone marrow transplant, the doctor gave him the following advice. "Here we only believe in science, but my experience says that you only be saved if you discover within yourself what you most want to do in this world." Babenco adds. "From that point I wanted to do a film which showed how good some of the moments were from my youth and how important some of those people from that time were to my life. Foolish Heart is a way of honouring the first people who opened up the way to my dreams. I also want to honour the first love of my life." The presence of Babenco in competition is a further demonstration of the current vitality of Brazilian cinema. After Walter Salles' Central Station won both the Golden Bear and best actress prize in Berlin, and Bruno Barreto's Four Days in September was nominated for an Academy Award, Brazilian films continue to make an impact on the international stage. Yet, ironically Foolish Heart, which is spoken in Spanish, nearly ended up being spoken in English and with an international cast. Until two months prior to the start of principal photography, the cast
was to have been Nastassja Kinski, Irene Jacob and Willem Dafoe, but Babenco
did not feel comfortable with this option. "My heart did not accept making
this film in English. I spoke to Piglia and he said "listen to the film,
it is talking to you". Recognising the fact that the English language and
international cast would help the visibility of the film, he ponders: "some
films are right for English, others are not. I made the option knowing
the risks, but I have to say that I'm very satisfied with the changes."
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