With Love And A Major Organ

“My mother used to tell me that her heart was a ball of yarn and it could get caught on other people,” says Anabel (Anna Maguire). We follow lines of red yarn stretched out through a forest, tangled around trees. They will lead us into the heart of a film quite unlike anything else at the 2023 Fantasia International Film Festival - a personal odyssey set in a parallel universe where the rules are subtly different but the stakes remain high.

Anabel is an office worker with little social life who feels cut off from the world around her. She’s an awkward soul who has never come to terms with a life centred around technology. Her colleagues worry about how she will find a relationship without using Life Zapp. She wants to do it the old fashioned way, by meeting someone in person. When she encounters George (Hamza Haq), who sits on a bench in the small park where she eats her lunch, reading yesterday’s news so that he can know that everything turned out okay, she is instantly smitten. He, however, is unable to reciprocate. He doesn’t seem to have a heart. So Anabel rips hers out of her chest, puts it in a box and sends it to him.

Though the film naturally relies heavily on symbolism, and viewers won’t be surprised to learn that it began life as a play, the performances are fully committed and it has an appropriate degree of emotional heft. Once her heart is gone, Anabel may not seem very emotional, but Maguire’s sterling work lets us see the weight of her numbness. Even as she begins to rattle those close to her, and as she develops a predatory aspect on the phones at work, we understand that it is costing her something; that one cannot endure without a heart. Eventually, we are told in the assured manner of people who have seen a subject discussed on television, her mouth will fill up with sand and she will die.

Whilst Anabel soldiers on, experiencing the world in a new way, George is bewildered by a sudden emotional connection to the world which turns everything upside down, at work and at home. His impulsive, irresponsible behaviour worries his mother, who becomes determined to get to the bottom of it all.

These contrasting experiences allow plenty of room for exploration and deadpan comedy in a world whose rules are so internally consistent that one soon ceases to worry about the absurdity of it all. At a metaphorical level, it works perfectly. Pleasingly, writer Julia Lederer isn’t really interested in true love or tying this yarn together neatly at the end. She’s happy to leave a few loose threads for us to tug at, keeping us wondering about what they might unravel. The tapestry of life is messy, and that’s okay. This film won’t necessarily steal your heart, but it may melt it a little.