The Heart Knows (now on Netflix) is a tug-your-heartstrings romance that’s literally about hearts: Benjamin Vicuna plays a rich man in need of a heart transplant, and the donor is a poor man, and after the surgery and funeral, the rich man meets the poor man’s widow and… well, no spoilers, but it gets complicated, as only movies about rich men with poor men’s transplanted hearts who meet the poor man’s widow can be. Marcos Carnevale directs this Argentinian drama, following Goyo, his previous and similarly contrived Netflix movie. But whether The Heart Knows charms us in a similar manner is the question.
The Gist: Tennis. It’s how rich people get some cardio in. Often on a court in their own backyards with a private coach whacking balls at them. Juan Manuel (Vicuna) is the rich guy, not the coach. He smashes a few volleys or whatever and there’s a point when he kinda takes a knee, but he ends up being OK. He chats with his statuesque girlfriend (Annasofia Facello), breezes past his housekeeper (Julia Calvo) and heads to work, where he’s the CEO of Concretar, a construction company. His weekend plan is to hop a private jet with his buddies and party in Rio. He’s on his way to the airport when he winces, shakes his numb arm, pulls over and manages to dial 911 before slumps on the steering wheel, the horn blaring.
Elsewhere. It’s Vale’s (Juilieta Diaz) birthday. Her grade-school son Tiago (Manuel da Silva) and husband Pedro (Facundo Espinosa) take her outside to show her her gift: Graffiti on a wall proclaiming their love for her. They don’t have much money and they live in a neighborhood, dubbed El Progreso, that’s seen better days, but they seem happy. That might not be for long, though. El Progreso is about to be bulldozed by developers – guess who that is? Right. Vale and Pedro get together with their neighbors and vow to fix up a med center that was started but never completed, in a bid to gussy up the area a bit and hopefully fend off the creeps who want to turn their homes into vape shops and condos or god knows what else. That evening, Pedro tools through the city on his motorcycle when he swerves to avoid traffic and skids. He slides across the pavement and slams his head into a curb.
Perhaps you can see where this is going. Juan Manuel’s sister Deborah (Gloria Carra) and best pal Tony (Peto Menahem) learn that he needs a heart transplant. Vale has an awful organ-donor conversation with the nurse. Fade out/fade in: THREE MONTHS LATER. Juan Manuel has a big scar on his chest. Vale cooks dinner for just two now. Juan Manuel asks his housekeeper to eat dinner with him and she wonders if something’s wrong with him because this never happened before. Vale works at the corner bar and grill and helps out with the med-center project. Juan Manuel feels like a different person now, not the privilege-saturated party guy he used to be. Vale just keeps on fighting for everything she needs, because that’s the fact of life of blue-collar folk.
Juan Manuel learns that the organ donor is from El Progreso. Coincidence or destiny? Depends on what kind of movie this is. He follows the intuition and curiosity of his new self to El Progreso, where he looks like a Benz guy in a Chevy land, and promptly steps in dog crap. Symbolism! The crap might just belong to late Pedro’s pooch, who approaches Juan Manuel, takes a sniff, then sits and holds out his paw to shake. Oh boy. Juan Manuel goes home and his housekeeper gives him some of her husband’s humble-workin’-man clothes so he can look the part of El Progreso, then he goes back and ingratiates himself with Vale and the folk by helping them rebuild the med center. Of course he doesn’t tell them who he really is, because they might roast him on a spit, and he tries to fend off everyone at Concretar because they’ve got the wrecking ball all gassed up and ready to go. He’s getting in deep, Juan Manuel. And then he gets in even deeper when he starts kissing Vale. Anyone else around here feel like they’re sitting on an atomic bomb, waiting for it to go off?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: David Duchovny’s late wife’s donated heart is inside Minnie Driver in Return to Me, and we all cry when they fall in love, none the wiser to the truth. And who could forget Untamed Heart, the quintessential early ’90s weepy about Christian Slater and his transplanted baboon heart?
Performance Worth Watching: Diaz brings winningly earnest gravitas to a boilerplate character among this movie’s well-stocked pantry of boilerplate characters.
Memorable Dialogue: Juan Manuel breaks it to Tony that he doesn’t want Concretar to put the ol’ development screws to El Progreso:
Juan Manuel: I’m going against all my interests as a businessman, but I’m being true to my principles as a human.
Tony: Listen to me, Ernesto “Che” Guevara. I’m having a stroke.
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Perfectly fine, professional performances by Diaz and Vicuna can’t elevate The Heart Knows above being a dreary, humorless and predictable slog. The plot is a toddler’s four-piece jigsaw puzzle, the characters are off the clearance rack and the screenplay shows little interest in enlivening the proceedings with any comedy or substantive drama. My snarky little aside about what kind of movie this is does indeed get answered: It’s not much of anything. It’s too timid to go full Hallmark schmaltz on the romantic divine providence/serendipity stuff, or explore the science and psychology of the changes a transplant recipient might experience. I was thoroughly bored.
Perhaps in search of tonal consistency, Carnevale finds the blandest route through this subject matter, pancaking Juan Manuel and Vale’s primary character arcs in the process and rendering their romance as tepid as last Tuesday’s tea. The supporting cast, usually employed to diversify and color the narrative, is similarly bland and washed out; one of Vale’s “quirky” neighbors is a mentally challenged man whose bellowed mantra is “Morons sons of bitches!”, and a caricature best left in the 1990s. A couple of times, the film felt like a throwback romance about wounded people finding snatches of happiness wherever they can, just like all of us tend to be and do. But it’s ultimately a shallow endeavor with a screenplay that’s ripe for renovation, if not a total tear-down and rebuild. So to speak.
Our Call: This movie about hearts doesn’t have enough heart. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.