Burning Hearts

It’s a tale as old as time, that of the young man and woman from rival clans who fall in love against the odds, making a violent conflict worse. In most versions of the tale, the lovers are doomed – but what if they got away with it? What might happen to them down the road, and what could it mean for everybody else?

The tone of the film is established at the very beginning as the camera pans over bodies, including children, lying in the dirt outside their farmhouse. One man twitches; a dark-clad figure walks over and shoots him in the head. The killers then release the family’s pigs, who hungrily approach the bodies. But they have unwittingly left a child alive. It’s a fatal mistake. This is Michele Malatesta. We see him retrieve his father’s signet ring, and we are informed that he went on to spend his life killing as many Camporeales as he could. When we meet him again he’s in his fifties, the head of a powerful family, presiding over a hard-won peace, but his son Andrea (Francesco Patanè) is about to plunge everything back into chaos again.

It’s love at first sight for Andrea when he catches sight of Marilena Camporeale (Elodie). One can understand it. She’s a striking looking woman, but very obviously forbidden fruit. A married mother of two, she’s also old enough to know better, yet she agrees to meet him at the local salt flats, which provide a stunning backdrop to their passionate embrace. “This is the first and last time,” she tells him, but anybody who hasn’t said that to themselves and failed to abide by it hasn’t lived.

Predictable consequences ensue. Michele tells Andrea that if it happens again, he’ll kill him, and fixes him up with a local sex worker for a hilarious encounter in a tiny caravan. Offers of cows are made in attempt to maintain the peace, the lovers being unable to keep their feeling secret. None of it works, and soon the bodies start to fall. Co-writer/director Pippo Mezzapesa, who based this on a true story, isn’t interested in taking the usual route, however. The English title may suggest a TV movie romance; the Italian, which translates literally as ‘I eat your heart’, is a little more apposite. The focus is on the moral disintegration of Andrea, once ‘good’, ultimately more of a monster than his father ever was. But there’s a twist, because it’s what’s happening on the sidelines that will change everything.

Not since The Godfather has any mafioso tale been so exquisitely scored. Mezzapesa puts quality first in every aspect, and it’s easy to see why the film gathered plaudits in Venice, going on to join the From Venice To London line-up. Michele D'Attanasio’s black and white cinematography is simply stunning, giving every frame a liquid beauty. This is a type of cinema rarely seen today, a gripping and often brutal thriller which will appeal to mainstream and art film audiences alike. Patanè is a capable lead, with the camera loving his wide, innocent-looking eyes, but it’s Elodie who really carries the emotional arc of the story, tortured by the things she witnesses, determined to keep her children safe no matter what it takes.

Blood feuds have rarely been so beguiling. After many years on the sidelines. Mezzapesa has arrived.